Newsletter Spring 2017

Gloucestershire Heritage Hub

Gloucestershire Family History Society

Gloucestershire Family History Society's new Family History Centre is on its way. 

Building works are underway to create a new home for Gloucestershire Family History Society's Family History Centre.  The new Centre will be based in Gloucestershire Heritage Hub, which is being developed at Gloucestershire Archives' Alvin Street premises as part of the 'For the Record' project.  It will provide a bright and spacious area where people will be supported to research the histories of people with local, national and international roots.  And there will be a dedicated office for Gloucestershire Family History Society (GFHS) volunteers.  In this article GFHS Chairman, David Howells shares what's going on behind the scenes to prepare for the move.   

 New Family History Centre under development

Image shows the new Family History Centre under development

Preparing for the move to our new premises

We're not going far (our current premises are already on the Gloucestershire Archives site, adjacent to the main Archives building) but our planned move is definitely keeping us busy.  As well as working with Archives staff to develop customer services arrangements for the new Heritage Hub, our Family History Centre volunteers have been going through our paperwork and assets to see what we can get rid of.  This means we sometimes have equipment and books available at the Family History Centre for a suitable donation. It's worth checking from time to time to see what's available as we're offering everything on a first come first served basis.  We anticipate there will be more to sort out when we get there.

There's still quite a lot to do and it'd be good to have some extra help, especially with the move itself, which is likely to be in July.  Please contact any of our Family History Centre volunteers if you would be able to support us in any way.  You can do this by dropping in or via the contact details on our website at http://gfhs.org.uk/the-society/contact-us/

Our Ongoing Activities

Our Family History Centre will be open as usual whilst we prepare for our move.  We're also busy with a number of projects:

Memorial Inscriptions, War Memorials & Rolls of Honour

Some of our volunteers are currently photographing and transcribing Memorial Inscriptions, and adding these to the current records that we hold.  And we have other volunteers who are doing the same with War Memorials and Rolls of Honour.  We're putting all this information, both newly created and already created, on a searchable database and will be making it available to our Family History Centre visitors to search; it currently contains approximately 110,000 names.

Gloucester Old Cemetery Removed Headstones

In the 1970’s the decision was taken by Gloucester City Council to remove headstones in the old cemetery in Tredworth Road, Gloucester. At the time the Cemetery staff recorded the inscriptions in a number of ledgers. Some of our members are transcribing these records which will eventually be put onto a database in the Family History Centre for visitors to search.

Other projects

All of which require volunteers; please register your interest at the Family History Centre.

We very much look forward to the move and generating a wider interest in Family History generally. Meantime, you can visit our website here

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