Latest news

We have started a new series on Tuesday highlighting the underrepresented parts of history and our collections – you can find them on social media by looking for #HiddenHeroes or #HiddenHistory.  These people or groups may be hard to find within the archives, or difficult to find in the archaeological record. It may be due...

Worcestershire Archive & Archaeology Service Customer Survey is now live! We’d like to hear what you think about our services. Have you visited us in The Hive, read posts on our social media, or sent an enquiry to our Archives or Historic Environment Record teams? Have you used our online resources, catalogues, databases and indexes?...

In this final 20th century project blog, we focus on how transport and travel, and particularly the rise of car ownership and individual mobility, has transformed the landscape and how we live our lives.

We've new online Family History workshops coming in June and July. Get help in starting or restarting family history, with tips from many years experience of helping people in the searchroom and answering question.

Worcester Life Stories is a collaborative project bringing local people together through shared stories of the City of Worcester. We supported the project by digitising photographs from film they had in their collections. Sheena Payne-Lunn, Historic Environment Record Officer for Worcester City Council, explains about the project and shares some of the lovely images we digitised.

Over half term we are going around Worcestershire with a family Archaeology Quest, with the help of the National Lottery Heritage Fund. Come and have a go at being an archaeologist and see what you can discover! We’ve got several challenges for you have a go at – see what you can identify and work...

Mr. Henry John Spinner (also known as Harry) from Worcester, was a glover travelling in third class on the Titanic to Gloversville, near New York in America, probably to work there. Aged 32, he had been born in 1880 in the Arboretum, Worcester where he had lived with his family before later moving with his...

For International Nurses Day we are looking in brief at the life of a local nurse Laura Stocks (1877-1973) who worked at the Hartlebury VAD Hospital during World War 1. She compiled scrapbooks of photographs, sketches, cartoons and messages of appreciation from the patients at Hartlebury Castle, which are now in the archives in The Hive, and provide an amazing insight into life there. 

We are now pleased to launch our online exhibition of material collected during the Redditch Tribunal project including records from our collections such as the Redditch Military Service Tribunal registers and correspondence as well as census records, local newspapers, and military records.

Samuel Ernest Hemming, originally from Bromsgrove, was a member of the crew, working as a lamptrimmer on the Titanic. Samuel was one of the first people to realise the ship was sinking after it hit the iceberg. He was rescued on a lifeboat and spoke in the American investigation before returning home to his family...