Gloucestershire Archives
Who are we?
Gloucestershire Archives is a Gloucestershire County Council service. We also provide an archive service for South Gloucestershire Council. The geographic areas of these councils were once a single county, now known as the historic county of Gloucestershire.
What do we do?
We gather, keep and share historic archive collections relating to Gloucestershire and South Gloucestershire, and local and family history resources relating to Gloucestershire.
The archives are kept at Gloucestershire County Council’s Alvin Street premises in Gloucester and you can use them in our public research room at the same location.
The local and family history resources are spread across Gloucestershire. The core collection is kept at our main site and area-specific collections are kept at Local and Family History Centres based at libraries in Cheltenham, Cinderford, Cirencester, Stroud, Stow and Tewkesbury. You can use them in the relevant venue.
You can discover more about us at gloucestershire.gov.uk/archives
Part of Gloucestershire Heritage Hub
As the lead founder of the newly launched Gloucestershire Heritage Hub network, initially comprising ‘For the Record’ key stakeholders, Gloucestershire Archives is working hard to develop on-site Heritage Hub facilities. These will be based at the County Council’s Alvin Street premises, which are already home to the Archives, Gloucestershire Family History Society and Gloucestershire Registration Service. The new on-site Hub will be a place where people with an interest in the documented heritage of Gloucestershire can support each other to gather, keep and share their personal and community archives.
From the architect’s drawing below we can start to imagine the modern and exciting future we are going to have.
The preparations for building works are well underway and most of the ground works exploration is now complete. Specialist site investigators have been making trial pits and bore holes around the main Archives building. Thankfully, most of the work was outdoors.
But we could not avoid the one hole in the Archives’ visitor coffee lounge!
These geological investigations are telling us about the engineering and environmental characteristics of the areas we plan to develop or build on. The ‘For the Record’ project architects are using this information to fine tune decisions about building design, including the sorts of foundations we’re going to need for the Heritage Hub spaces and the three new Archives strong rooms that will be built at the same time. It is a complicated business because the strong rooms need to be built to a particular specification and there is archaeology and proximity to the railway line to consider too.
Whilst all this has been going on, Archives staff have moved hundreds of maps from the strong room that will eventually become part of the Archives’ new research room in the Heritage Hub. We’ve also emptied several other rooms that will be re-modelled during the building work. And we have started to kit out a temporary research room that we will occupy during building works. This will be in the Frith Centre, adjacent to the main Archives building and next to the Family History Centre.
All being well, we hope to begin building work early in the New Year. This is a bit later than expected but we are sure the end result will be worth the wait.
New Community Heritage Development Officer
There is a new face at Gloucestershire Archives: Sally Middleton, the newly appointed Community Heritage Development Officer for Gloucestershire Heritage Hub.
Sally has lived in Gloucestershire for over 20 years, and spent 12 of those years working with the county’s Libraries & Information service, most recently as a Group Manager based in Gloucester. She has also worked for Gloucester City Council as a Neighbourhood Manager, working in local communities.
Sally trained in social and community work, and has worked in community development projects at home and abroad. Last year she helped commission a street art project in Kingsholm to celebrate the Rugby World Cup 2015 and Gloucester’s role as a host city. She has also worked with older people in New York, with homeless people and with disabled people in a variety of settings.
Sally is passionate about: ABCD community development – looking at what is strong, not what is wrong with communities and building on those strengths; reading (especially social history from the Georgian to post-war periods); and contemporary figurative and impressionist art.
She says the most useful piece of advice she has ever been given is that everyone should “treat each day as if it’s an adventure” and intends to do this in her new role. She is very much looking forward to getting to grips with her new job and to working with partners and individuals to make Gloucestershire Heritage Hub a reality.
Sally’s post is being financed by Heritage Lottery Fund.
Sally Middleton, Community Heritage Development Officer
Archives Anniversaries
We’re celebrating two important anniversaries this year: the 80th birthday of record keeping in Gloucestershire; and the 90th anniversary of the Alvin Street building we occupy. The building was originally designed as Kingsholm Council School and formally opened by the mayor of Gloucester 90 years ago on 11 October 1926. You can discover more about it, and our plans for celebrating, in the next article of this newsletter.
You can view our Gloucestershire Archives blog here at https://gloucestershirearchives.wordpress.com/
Onsite Heritage Hub coming soon
We are thrilled to have a funding package in place which is allowing works to start. We need to continue fundraising but would particularly like to thank all those whose who have contributed to the project so far. Also to thank the Friends of Gloucestershire Archives who have worked extremely hard in leading the fundraising campaign.
You can view our Gloucestershire Archives blog here at https://gloucestershirearchives.wordpress.com/
Archives’ public service during building works
We will run a temporary research room from the Frith Centre whilst the main Archives building is adapted and extended. We are aiming to provide as normal a service as possible in the run up to, and during, building works. So our research room will remain open to the public on Tuesdays Wednesdays and Thursdays between 9:00am and 4:30pm. We’ve established a ‘pre-order’ system for managing access to our precious original documents during this phase. You can find details about this at www.gloucestershire.gov.uk/archives/preorder.
Gloucestershire Family History Society’s Family History Centre will continue to operate as normal in the run up to and during building works.
Onsite parking will remain unchanged until works start in the New Year. After this and until works are completed, it will be restricted to blue-badge holders. Other visitors can use local on-street parking (limited), public car parks at Hare Lane and Great Western Road or public transport. The car parks and bus / train stations are all an easy 10-minute walk from the Archives.
You can view our Gloucestershire Archives blog here at https://gloucestershirearchives.wordpress.com/
Archives Service Celebrates 90th Anniversary of the Kingsholm School Building
If you have ever visited Gloucestershire Archives you might have twigged it is based in an old school building. In fact, the Archives premises were originally built for Kingsholm Council School and formally opened by the mayor of Gloucester 90 years ago, on 11 October 1926.
Image of the opening ceremony on the front steps from the Cheltenham Chronicle and Gloucestershire Graphic, 16 October 1926
The red-brick, single storey building is a significant feature of the local landscape in Kingsholm. The original layout is still recognisable, despite many changes over the years. So it brings back memories of old friends and shared experiences for visiting former pupils.
The Archives celebrated the building’s special anniversary by holding a free ‘drop-in’ event in Roots Community Café in Alvin Street on Tuesday 22 November. This featured a small display about the history of the school and Gloucestershire Archives service, which is celebrating its 80th anniversary this year.
The building’s history is quite well documented through personal memories and a variety of written material that details the original building work and the school’s working life. It was the first school built by Gloucester City Council after World War 1 and its completion represented a triumph over what the mayor described as ‘extraordinary difficulties’. These included the sudden death of the architect and shortages of both manpower and materials in the economic depression following the end of the war. The first pupils appreciated its innovative, modern design and state-of-the-art facilities including central heating and hot water on tap. Amenities we take for granted today but which few of the pupils would have enjoyed at home in the 1920s.
After the school closed in 1973, Gloucestershire County Council bought the site and adapted the building to house the County Record Office, now known as Gloucestershire Archives.
It seems fitting that as it enters its 10th decade the building is to be given a new lease of life. Re-modelling and construction works are due to start in the New Year and it will reopen as the home of Gloucestershire Heritage Hub in 2018. You can discover more about this in the Gloucestershire Archives section of this newsletter.
You can view our Gloucestershire Archives blog here at https://gloucestershirearchives.wordpress.com/
Archival Box Donation
Clive Andrews, a trustee of the Friends of Gloucestershire Archives, very generously donated archival boxes to Gloucestershire Archives for storing community archives. Local people taking part in ‘For the Record’ community cataloguing activities will be first to use them. Thank you, Clive!
You can view our Gloucestershire Archives blog here at https://gloucestershirearchives.wordpress.com/
Diocese of Gloucester
Who are we?
The diocese is the Anglican (Church of England) family of God in and around Gloucestershire.
The Church touches almost every person’s life in Gloucestershire, whether they are regular worshippers, occasional visitors or passers-by. Our buildings are important focal landmarks and significant community and historic assets. We have over 300 parishes and 390 churches in Gloucestershire and beyond, and a core set of records about every community in Gloucestershire, which we keep at Gloucestershire Archives. The records cover every one of our parishes and include parish registers dating back to 1539, records relating to policing, road maintenance and looking after the poor (formerly a parish responsibility), Parochial Church Council minutes and parish magazines. People use them for family and local history research.
The Diocese of Gloucester is one of the founder members of the fledgling Gloucestershire Heritage Hub network, initially comprising ‘For the Record’ key stakeholders
Parish of Haresfield Register 1558 - 1654
Part of Gloucestershire Heritage Hub
We have been working with Gloucestershire County Council since the early 1900s to care for our parish and diocesan records, continuously depositing these at the County Archives since 1974. So we are delighted to be joining Gloucestershire Archives and other ‘For the Record’ stakeholders as members of the newly launched ‘Gloucestershire Heritage Hub’ community. This new working arrangement secures provision for local archives, including future Diocesan records, both physical and digital.
‘Name the Strong Room’ for Diocese of Gloucester
As part of our involvement in the ‘For the Record’ project, Diocese of Gloucester is excited to be naming one of the new strong rooms that are due to be built at Gloucestershire Archives. We have organised a competition for this, inviting parishes to send in suggestions. The parish that comes up with the winning name will be offered a group tour of the new Gloucestershire Heritage Hub facility at Alvin Street, Gloucester, including a peep at the three new strong rooms that will house the next generation of archives. They will also get to see a unique display of archives relating to their area.
You can view our Gloucestershire Archives blog here at https://gloucestershirearchives.wordpress.com/