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One of the great things about my job as an Archives Assistant is that I get to review a wide range of collections, whether it’s to assist researchers in the Searchroom, to undertake cataloguing and support digital preservation or deliver physical outreach and online campaigns such as Explore Your Archive. Recently I was given the...

Attracting Industry Part of the Master Plan was to attract a variety of industry to the town. The set-up of large factories were negotiated together with land, and allocation of new houses to key workers. BKL Alloys is an example of this, a firm that moved one of it’s divisions from Birmingham. As a result,...

Planning for a New Town Unlike most other New Towns, Redditch had a rich history, dating from the year 1140 when Cistercian monks founded Bordesley Abbey in the Arrow Valley, through to its more recent industries in needle-making, fish-hooks and motorcycle production. Redditch Development Corporation therefore  had a slightly different task to most. They had...

More from the recently catalogued deposit highlights Havergal’s impressive body of work, despite a life cut short. If you missed Part One, find it here.  ‘Writing is praying with me: for I never seem to write even a verse by myself’, said Frances Ridley Havergal. This is perhaps unsurprising given the English religious poet and...

Recently catalogued deposits of books, family sketchbooks, music, testimonials and presentation volumes, as well as biographical texts, shed light on the English religious poet and hymnwriter, and her remarkable family. Born on 14th December 1836, Frances Ridley Havergal was raised in the Victorian English vicarage of Astley, Worcestershire. The youngest child of Reverend William Henry...

Feckenham Manorial Moated Site is a nationally significant scheduled monument. Despite this, it has been on an ‘at risk’ heritage register – until now, that is. Owned and managed by Redditch Borough Council, it is also a key green and recreational space within the heart of Feckenham village, and the focus of a community group’s...

People researching their family history now have access to more than two million records detailing baptisms, marriages, and burials in the county. Over five centuries worth of records have been released online thanks to a new partnership between Worcestershire County Council’s Archive and Archaeology Service and Ancestry, the largest UK Family History Site. The records,...

Photographs offer a visual record of the history of the past. Seeing what people, places and communities once looked like can help us trace changes overtime. They can even reveal the history of the photographic medium itself. At Worcestershire Archive Service, we hold 80,020 photos as part of the Worcestershire Photographic Survey – a collection...

Are you a Worcestershire-based Farming Club or Society? Do you have records that chart the history of rural life or activities in Worcestershire? If so, we would love to hear from you! As we explore in today’s blog about Abberley and District Young Farmers’ Clubs, we want you to help us build upon our existing...

Forty years ago, on the 5th of July 1983 the Redditch Development Corporation invited Queen Elizabeth II to visit Redditch to open the Kingfisher Shopping Centre and the Forge Mill National Needle Museum. She would meet civic leaders and local representatives as she walked through the town centre and ate at the Town Hall, before...