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Halloween – a good time for ghost stories but a chance encounter at the Hive showed that one such story was true! Generations of Bishampton children have been scared/delighted by the story of Old Buckle, the Headless Horseman, who roamed the road between Throckmorton and Bishampton.  A chance encounter at the Hive shone light onto...

Although we weren’t in The Hive for a couple of months our archives were still expanding. A new addition was a Pipe Roll, which contains a list of money collected on behalf of the Government in 1792. Pipe Rolls are dramatic documents, consisting of sheets sewn together so are very, very long, and when rolled...

The Worcestershire Historic Environment Record (HER) Public Desk will be reopening from Thursday 3rd December. To allow for social distancing measures, the desk will be operating on an appointment only basis between 10:30 and 13:30 on Tuesdays and Thursdays. The Worcestershire HER is the County’s primary record for archaeological and historic environment information, holding over...

“The measure of any great civilisation is in its cities and a measure of a city’s greatness is to be found in the quality of its public places, its parks and squares” (John Ruskin) Over the past two years Worcestershire’s Historic Environment Record has been working to identify, record and better understand the significance of...

For several years Worcestershire Archive & Archaeology Service has been collecting references to Black people living in Worcestershire. The county today has 5% of the population who are non-white, but there has been a Black presence for at least 400 years, which can surprise people. It may be longer, and there will be far more...

Did you know Charles Darwin had links to Malvern? In this three part blog we look at his visits and connections to the water cure using some of the books and information in our collections. Darwin returned to Down House in July, 1849 and in his letter to his cousin William Darwin Fox on the...

Look what we found Our archaeology unit was digging in a really small sub-urban area surrounded by agricultural lands in the south of Worcestershire when a sharp-eyed field archaeologist spotted an incredible find …an ancient piece worked flint. You might think that finding a flint shard is not that uncommon and on some sites that...

Remember your schools? Sites, buildings, structures and features relating to the provision of knowledge and skills are one of the most distinctive and often innovative examples of 20th Century architecture, particularly in terms of how their planning expresses developing ideas about children and society.   Over the past two years Worcestershire’s Historic Environment Record has...

It’s been a difficult year with so many significant social and community events cancelled. One important festival that has adapted this year is Worcestershire Pride. This year the celebrations are going virtual! In this blog we look back on records uncovered in the archives and we encourage deposits to represent our LGBT+ community for the...

When lockdown started in March, Dr Pat Hughes, local historian and regular in the archives, looked into a previous epidemic, the plague of 1637. She probably knows the city archives better than anyone, an even without access to the original documents she still was able to write and send us this fascinating look at what...