Archive

In the second of our Halloween inspired blog posts we take a look at a recent site which produced a grave that was seemingly missing a body! During late 2016 and early 2017 a team from Worcestershire Archaeology carried out one of the largest excavations in their history in connection with the creation of a...

In the first of two posts with a spooky flavour for Halloween we’re taking a look at some ritual symbols intended to ward off witches and evil spirits that were discovered earlier this year in a barn in south Worcestershire. In January 2017 buildings archaeologist Tim Cornah went out to investigate a group of farm...

85 years ago today HRH Edward, Prince of Wales, visited Worcester to officially open the widened Worcester Bridge and the remodelled Cripplegate Park. Photos of this event, and the preceding engineering works, are contained in an archive deposit which has just been added to the online catalogue. Mr C I Carey Walker was the city...

  An archaeology open day is being held at Soudley Camp on Sunday 29th October 2017, 11am-3pm, including site tours, children’s activities and a display of finds that have been discovered. Archaeological investigations of the Camp are being carried out by a team of local volunteers and archaeologists from Worcestershire Archive & Archaeology over the...

Interested in pottery identification? Our recently updated reference resource is freely available online to help anyone trying to identify pottery that was made or used in Worcestershire. Since 2003, the Worcestershire Ceramics Online Database has made the Worcestershire ceramic fabric type series accessible to all. The database holds information on all of the pottery fabrics found...

In May to July 2017 The Infirmary was awarded funding from Heritage Lottery Fund. They ran two programmes to engage young people with heritage from Worcestershire using Minecraft and LEGO, called Virtually Rebuilding Worcestershire’s Lost Buildings. One of the buildings they were looking at was Powick Asylum, and we helped the young people find out...

One of our fascinating recent deposits here at Worcestershire Archive Service is a German map of the county, which was part of the “Sonderausgabe!” or “Special Editions” published between 1937 and 1940. These were copies of the Ordnance Survey half-inch maps, scaled up to 1:100.000 to put them in line with standard German maps issued...

  Early autumn is a time when many take stock and give thanks for the year’s harvest. In the globalised world of today though, where supermarkets stock globally grown fresh produce all year round, harvest time has become less noticeable and, seemingly, less important to our availability of food. In a world before refrigerators, farm...

Some finds, like the sword we found a few weeks ago, have an obvious significance and appeal. Most artefacts were everyday objects though, but even these have interesting stories to tell of the individuals who made and used them. September’s find of the month is one of these. This is the upper half of an...