A new level of accessibility

Staff at Gloucestershire Archives are particularly excited by a new venture under development called ‘Reading the Records’, which aims to open up our collections to blind and visually impaired customers. On 10th June we ran a successful pilot session with representatives from the Sight-loss Council and Gloucester’s Talking Newspaper.  There was a touch tour of the ‘tools of the trade’, a description of our oldest document with an explanation of seals and a tour of the facilities. We were even joined by Heidi the very beautiful guide dog - perhaps the first dog ever to enter an archive strongroom! 

So what are we hoping to achieve? 

Well, obviously we want to open up our service to a new group of users but beyond that we hope to become a social venue for their families, friends and carers. As a service we are always on the look-out for alternative ways to highlight our collections. This objective ties in with the motto of our service which is to 'gather, keep and share' in a bid to 'educate, enrich and empower'.  Crucially though, we hope that Gloucestershire Archives can act as a trailblazer and show other archive services how records can be used differently for a wider appeal. We also plan on adding an online aspect, to share our collections with people who may be house bound, supplementing the excellent work already undertaken by the Talking Newspapers.  

We have 5 on-site sessions scheduled to start in October specifically tailored to visually impaired users. For two of these sessions we will also be working with our partners, the Gloucestershire Family History Society and the Gloucestershire Police Archives.  If you are interested or know of someone who may be eligible, please get in touch with us at archives.gloucestershire.gov.uk, Title the subject of your email 'VI sessions' and we will get back to you as soon as possible.

A fond farewell but watch this space!

For the past two years Jemma Fowkes, Community Heritage Officer for Gloucestershire Archives has run the Heritage Ambassadors programme, funded by Historic England and Voices Gloucester.  The Heritage Ambassadors are a group of young people, aged 15-17 years old, from Gloucestershire, who meet several times a year to share their love of history. Last week she bid a fond farewell to the latest group. 

'I left the final Heritage Ambassadors' meeting, feeling giddy from the glut of heritage and history we'd experienced! Visiting firstly, St Nicholas' Church, and then popping over the road to The Folk, our Ambassadors experienced two very different historic buildings.

Thanks to the CCT's Isobel, for her thoughtful tour of the church. There was much to love. Especially the door knocker showing the Devil dragging a drunk woman to hell! Isobel drew attention to the difficulties involved in looking after churches, whilst challenging the students to consider how they could be used. A silent disco was my favourite suggestion! At The Folk, knowledgeable guides, Richard and Andrew, led us around the gorgeous timber-framed building. They enthused the Ambassadors with the importance of memory and stories, the narrative weaving through different times and events and including Gloucester's most notorious individuals. I was saddened this was the last of our meetings. This year's cohort have been a joy! Thank you to all the Ambassadors for their love of history and heritage. Also thanks to Hundred Heroines, Canon Photography, The Folk, the CCT and Gloucester Civic Trust for providing the inspiration!'

However, there is good news! The Heritage Ambassadors programme will be restarting in November. If you are or know anyone aged between 15-17 with a love of heritage, please get in touch with Jemma directly by email on Jemma.fowkes@gloucestershire.gov.uk

Sounds of the South West - listen and learn...

Sounds of the South West aims to preserve our region's valuable audio heritage by digitising at risk recordings, ensuring that local history is saved for the future. This has given us a chance to spend time listening to some of the fascinating and revealing audio recordings which have now been digitised from our collections at Gloucestershire Archives. We wanted to find ways to share it extracts and full-length recordings with you. To create the short illustrated or digital stories, a group of volunteers came along to a workshop.  They were provided with short audio clips and images from the archives.  Thanks so much to all the volunteers for their hard work on this. We love what you’ve done!  

To hear what’s been published so far - click Sounds of the South West - Gloucestershire Archives

Stories so far include Agnes Davis, born in 1897 talking about life in the Forest of Dean (illustrated with beautiful drawings by children from Coleford Local History day); H J Massingham poetic talk on woodland bird, from around 1930s; Roger Staley’s reflections on the impact of foot and mouth disease on his farm in Thornbury (2001) and Mr Leslie Workman’s memories of life growing up in Sheepscombe.

Coming soon:

Mr Charles Smith talks about his memories of Hardwicke Court where his mother was second nanny to the Lloyd-Bakers.

Deryck Huby, on salmon fishing on the Severn.

Jack Cale – basket maker of Quedgeley

All of these stories have been made possible, thanks to funding from the National Lottery Heritage Fund.  Have a listen and see what you think!

 

The Green Pledge Project

In October 2023 we started on our latest major lottery funded project, the 'Green Pledge Project' having been awarded £246,800 to focus on cataloguing large environmental collections and developing community-led collecting initiatives whilst reducing the carbon footprint of our service.

The Green Pledge project will continue into Autumn, but the list of achievements is impressive.   

 Over 9000 maps and plans deposited by the Environment Agency have been catalogued and are now searchable for the first time.  

A series of thought-provoking podcasts on environmental matters has been produced - https://www.gloucestershire.gov.uk/archives/our-projects/the-green-pledge-project/podcast/ 

Solar panels have been installed on the archives building.

Our in-house accredited conservators have also been leading the way, working with the National Archives, in the testing and development of passive storage to create safer and more stable environments for our archive strongrooms. 

From January 2024 onwards, we have been working with Project Grow CIC and the Wiggly Charities to grow fruit and vegetables in the Gloucestershire Heritage Hub community garden, empowering local people. 

At the beginning of June, the work of the Green Pledge  Project was further showcased in the Cheltenham Science Festival with 5230 people, many of them school children, visiting our display, appropriately erected in a shed which is now part of the garden at our local school, Kingsholm Primary.

Our outreach officer, Marion Hill, has been giving inspiring talks about our area’s green heritage. When she visited the Wotton Area Climate Action Network, audience member, Sam Munton, decided to come to the archives for a first visit, do some research of her own and has written up the experience in a wonderful blog about how local archives reveal landscape change and highlight the impact of grassroots efforts to support nature. You can read this here Digging Into the Past to Shape a Greener Future

The Green Pledge Project will be drawing to a close in terms of delivering events at the end of September but watch out for our end of project celebration!  We hope that the legacy of our work will carry on well beyond and we are currently developing online exhibitions which will stay on the website alongside the podcasts and tastes of the collection. To see all of these as well as the up-coming events please visit https://www.gloucestershire.gov.uk/archives/our-projects/the-green-pledge-project/.

All of this work has been possible thanks to funding from the National Lottery Heritage Fund.

A Summer afternoon in Stonehouse

The Gloucester Local History Association’s Summer Afternoon Meeting was held at The Community Centre in Stonehouse on Sunday, 6th July, and was organised by Stonehouse History Group. Around 60 people attended and were able to view a series of displays, including the history of St Cyr’s Church, local industries, and historic houses around the town.

Following an introductory talk on the history of Stonehouse, attendees had a choice of one of five walks or visits. Some chose to drive the short journey to Stonehouse Court, a manor house dating from 1601, and, after hearing about the history of the old manor, featured in the Domesday Book, they continued on to the Stroudwater Canal and the Midland Railway Viaduct before concluding the walk at St Cyr’s Church. Walkers could also choose to explore historical routeways and visit the new vineyard at the edge of the town, which follows ancient local tradition.

Local and national aboriculturalist, John Parker, showed a group some of the wide variety of trees which make up the Stonehouse Arboretum. A gentler option was to walk around the High Street and learn some of the stories behind the buildings there.

For those who preferred to stay at the Centre, there was the option of attending a talk about Stonehouse in World War Two and the changes that the war brought to the village.

The day was rounded off in the traditional GLHA fashion with a delicious afternoon tea and the chance to chat with fellow local historians.

    

    

Where there's a will, there's a way...

Following the completion of the Cheltenham VCH project to transcribe local wills and inventories, in April 2023 four pairs of those transcribers started to work on  Winchcombe wills and inventories from the 16^th to the 18^th centuries.

Additional transcribers were later recruited so we also now have:-

·        Two pairs of transcribers working on Hailes wills and inventories

·        One pair of transcribers working on Sudeley wills and inventories.

To date, an impressive 318 wills for Winchcombe, Hailes & Sudeley have been fully transcribed, including all Winchcombe wills from the Gloucester Diocesan Registry between 1540 and 1650. 

This work provides researchers with valuable information about  local residents, giving details of their wealth, family connections and the extent of their holdings and influence both within and outside the county of Gloucestershire. 

Getting ready for 2027 - the Gloucester Mariners Project

The Gloucestershire Mariners Project has involved Gloucestershire Archive staff, the Gloucestershire Family History Society and independent volunteers in a review of the information holdings which cover Gloucestershire’s Maritime History.

The initial focus was on the crew lists held at Gloucestershire Archives (collection reference D3080) covering a dates between 1863-1913. Gloucestershire Family History Society members focused on names from these crew lists and the villages mentioned. Census information also helped to track the employment numbers for the maritime trade in the county alongside other major trades and industries. Links between the trade on Gloucestershire’s canals and the ports has also now begun to surface through coordination with researchers working for the Stroudwater Navigation Archive Charity (SNAC). Health and safety issues and the dangers of a life at sea have been highlighted by both the crew list information and individual research by the volunteers involved. 

An exhibition based on all of this research and the many stories that have emerged will be on show at the Gloucester History Festival in September 2025. The exhibition will then be displayed at the National Waterways Museum in the Docks during 2026 and will again be used during the bicentenary celebrations for the Docks in 2027. An online exhibition is in preparation and negotiations are underway for a scaled down physical exhibition to tour local libraries and smaller venues along the Gloucester and Berkeley Canal.

From the initial project work discussion has moved to digitisation of the holdings and widening the coverage to other crew list holdings in the South West. The information would include voyages, crew and masters, boat ownership and details of the vessels themselves. 

Outline information on 400 ships from the crew lists has been captured on a spreadsheet. This data shows that just over 80% of Gloucester owned vessels were working on the local ‘River trade’. Traditionally this was the rivers Severn and Avon and the Bristol Channel as well as voyages to ports in South Wales and North Devon. The majority of the voyages involve Bristol. Around 15% were in the ‘Home Trade’ including Eire and the near continent. 2% of the voyages were to ports around the World.

Essentially, the project will act as a very useful base for further exciting preparations for the Gloucester Docks bicentenary. It has brought together a network of people who are interested in this subject and encouraged a greater awareness of a previously under researched area of the counties history. This project has been possible due to support from the Lloyds Register Foundation. 

 

 

Celebrate all things 'family history' with us

 Who doesn’t love a chance to share their enthusiasm, whether steam trains, football or especially family history, with other like-minded souls?

So we in GFHS are absolutely delighted to host another Family History Fair between 10am and 4pm on Saturday 6 September.  This is one of the ever-popular monthly Heritage Hub Open Days which will give you the chance to discover something new, whether you are just getting started with your research or want to find more details about your ancestors’ lives or the area in which you live.

 So what’s happening?

Our own volunteers will be on hand to talk about some of the projects we’ve been working on in the last year, especially the Gloucestershire Mariners’ project funded by Lloyds Register Foundation.  Led by local historian Tony Conder this project is exploring Gloucestershire’s maritime history and the families involved in it.  We’ve researched some of those families unearthing many amazing stories along the way which Tony is using in his display at the Gloucester History Festival later in September.  We’ll also be able to tell you about our long-running projects to index the local civil registration records (BMDs) and survey the county graveyards and War Memorials.

 Listen to the Experts

We’re welcoming two amazing speakers.  Dr Janet Few, speaking at 1.30pm, is a family, local and community historian and author with an international reputation.  She’ll be talking about some of the less well known sources for family history research, from Absent Voters Lists to Valuation Office records.  This talk promises something for everyone no matter what their experience.  Simon Davies, speaking at 11am, has created WeAre.xyz which is a new platform for storing and sharing family and local history research.  This is a great chance to learn about the latest developments in this important area. 

 Booking is essential for the talks via https://www.heritagehub.org.uk/events/

A problem shared…..Drop into our Research Centre to discover how to get your family journey off to the best start.  If you’ve hit a ‘brick wall’ with your research and aren’t sure what to do next  - our volunteers will be happy to try to help.  If you’ve already done the FH basics but want to find out more about your ancestors’ lives or you’re keen to investigate the area in which you, yourself, are living - just ask us. No problem if your family isn’t local.  Many of the online resources in the Centre cover the whole world and we’re also a FamilySearch Affiliate Library which gives access to a huge variety of information. If DNA puzzles you, make an appointment for a short advice session (morning only). 

 Be inspired

We’ve invited FH Societies from the neighbouring counties and other heritage groups to come to offer their specialist help and advice.  We’re also very grateful to the staff from Gloucestershire Archives who will be providing behind-the-scenes tours, advice about preserving family memorabilia and a display of some of the Archives’ own treasures.

We’re looking forward to seeing you there!

Saturday events at the Heritage Hub

2 August, 1-4pm

Under, Over, Through - a focus on road transport

Talk and film show on the day, booking essential at https://www.heritagehub.org.uk/events/

1.15pm – ‘Life in the bus lane’. A social history of
Gloucestershire’s public transport by John Chandler

2.30pm – Vintage transport in Gloucestershire, a film by
Kate Peake

Also on the day: Climb aboard Stagecoach’s heritage bus onsite; discuss current bus routes; learn about sustainable transport, new electric buses coming to
Gloucestershire and meet representatives from Stagecoach West; examine records on buses, cars, roads, vehicle licensing, bridge design, maintenance and opening, route planning and much more, all within collections held at Gloucestershire Archives;  and road transport related dioramas
Refreshments throughout the afternoon, donations welcome.

6 September, 11-4pm

Family History Fair

Talks - booking essential at https://www.heritagehub.org.uk/events/

11.00am - Simon Davies, talking about, and demonstrating, WeAre.xyz, a new platform for storing and sharing family and local history research. A chance to learn about the latest developments!

1.30pm - Dr Janet Few, family, local and community historian, author and current President of the Family History Federation, talking about some of the less well-known sources for family history research. Something new for everyone!

Also on the day: visit the FH Centre to discover how to kickstart your own research, starting from family memories, old photos or memorabilia or to take it a step further and find out more about where (and how) your family lived. Share those brick walls!; get specialist help from members of neighbouring Family History Societies and other heritage groups; ask for advice about preserving your family memorabilia with accredited conservators and other Gloucestershire Archives staff

Have a look behind-the-scenes at Gloucestershire Archives. Tours at 10.30am, 12.30pm and 3pm - no need to book; enjoy a display of some of the ‘Treasures’ held in the Archives

Refreshments throughout the day, donations welcome and secondhand bookstall

4 October, 1-4pm 

Varied and Vibrant - a Year in the Life of the Mayor of Gloucester

See here for more information in due course.

Our on-site events are held at the Heritage Hub, Clarence Row, Alvin Street, Gloucester GL1 3DW. Parking is free for 'open' Saturdays and you are also welcome to spend time in our lovely community garden prior to and during each event.  The site opens at 10am, as does the Gloucestershire Family History Resource Centre. And don't forget to check out our 'Secrets Revealed' online talks, details available from the link above.

Gloucester History Festival, Autumn 2025 - 6-21 September

Digging up the past - two events for your diary

As part of the ‘Store-to-Store’ project in the city, the Museum of Gloucester and Cotswold Archaeology will be presenting further talks in a series of in-person talks (taking place fortnightly; not available online), focusing on archaeology in and around Gloucester.  Please see event details attached and below, including details on how to book your free ticket.  Places are limited!:

 ‘The Roman Eastern Cemetery, Gloucester: the Later Roman burials excavations adjacent to Brunswick Street’

 Presented by Sharon Clough, Cotswold Archaeology

 Wednesday 30^th July, 7pm start

 Where: Wheatstone Hall, Museum of Gloucester

 Free tickets, via Eventbrite

 https://tinyurl.com/GloucesterRomanCemetery

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 'The Archaeology of the A417 "Missing Link"’

 Presented by Alex Thomson, Cotswold Archaeology

 Wednesday 13th August, 7pm start

 Where: Wheatstone Hall, Museum of Gloucester

 Free tickets, via Eventbrite

 https://tinyurl.com/A417Archaeology

An evening in celebration of literary love.

Voices Gloucester: Scriptorium sessions

Serving South Gloucestershire

Gloucestershire Archives collects, preserves and makes accessible archives relating to the historic county of Gloucestershire. This includes an area to the north of Bristol which is now administered by South Gloucestershire Council, a unitary authority in existence since 1996.  Since then, we have been working in partnership with South Gloucestershire Council to ensure that the rich archive resources relating to this area are safely preserved and shared. Boundary changes over the years can pose a challenge to researchers. This is particularly true for parishes which, until 1974,  were in the south of the county.  We have therefore produced the South Gloucestershire Research Mini Guide to provide a basic introduction and overview. We have also compiled the more in depth South Gloucestershire Guide.which has a detailed breakdown of all available records and their location. This resource can be searched by place and topic.

What types of record are held?

From India to the Isle of Wight - tracking down our local Force

During the recent spell of very hot weather, despite lethargy setting in for some, the Police Archives have continued to work on various projects and make great progress.

Two of our volunteers have been working hard to trace the family of Herbert Hall, the last member of Gloucestershire constabulary to be killed during World War ll. The search has taken them to India, the Isle of Wight and beyond. Unfortunately our budget does not stretch to actual trips as I think everyone would volunteer for an Archives trip to India if so! However, we believe that we may have managed to track down his remaining family and are keenly awaiting confirmation and hoping to get an actual photograph of him from the family archives.

Another Police volunteer is looking at officers who have died in service, quite a poignant task following the death of on-duty Police Constable Ian Minnett in June. Whilst we hold several lists of officers who have died, often very little is known about their careers and in fact, their lives. We now have much more information following this volunteer's research and over time this will be added to our website. 

The Police Archives have an office at Police HQ as well as at the Heritage Hub but we can usually be found at the Hub, Monday-Wednesday 9am-2.30pm. This is a great venue for 'walk-in' visitors who are always welcome although we always suggest that you make an appointment to avoid disappointment because we do go out and about. A few weeks ago we had a nice surprise visitor - the grandson of our first Chief Constable AT Lefroy. At the time we were researching Lefroy for an upcoming talk and so by chance there was a lot of paperwork about him scattered about the office! This was lovely for the grandson to see and we were able to exchange information and put some misconceptions straight about his grandfather.

If you have any police related photographs we are always happy to receive Jpegs via gloucestershirepolicearchives@gmail.com and queries can also be sent to the same email address. We can also scan photographs in our office at the Heritage Hub on the same day. Do come and see us, to learn and share stories about our local force.