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A journey, this time one of work not leisure is the diary of the voyage from Antwerp to San Francisco and back to England by the sailing ship ‘James Kerr’ between 1901 and 1902 written by W. G. Bennett of Edelston, Battenhall Road, Worcester. This ship was built in 1892 by T. Royden & Sons,...

In the display cabinets on level 2 we’re featuring the Civil War in Worcestershire from across our collections and services. Worcestershire is heavily linked to the Civil War, with the first skirmish taking place at Powick, and the final battle fought here in 1651. Worcester was besieged several times, and Charles I visited the city...

Malcolm was County Archaeologist for 16 years, 1993-2009, and he shares his memories with us. I arrived in 1993 and had the privilege of being the last County Archaeologist of the old county of Herefordshire and Worcestershire and the first of the reborn Worcestershire. A lot of time was spent managing this huge change but...

We continue resharing the letters of Gunner Bert Clements, read by Naomi Taylor. They are a collection of letters sent home from the trenches by Bert, and which were later deposited in the archives. They give the insights of one soldier out of millions who served in the war. We originally put them out over...

As we prepare to mark Remembrance Day, 100 years after the first one, we thought we’d share this clip from an interview with Winifred Barber. In it she recalls the very first Remembrance Day, when she went into Birmingham to join many others in marking the day on 11th November 1919. The interview recently came...

Over the last few year we have shared the letters of Gilbert Clements through readings by Naomi Taylor. This was part of Worcestershire World War One Hundred project. The readings were aimed at making these letters more accessible by making them sharable on social media and for people to be able to listen to them....

I joined Hereford and Worcester County Council to work for the talented archaeologist, Charles Mundy, on the Deansway urban excavations which were about to commence in central Worcester. I subsequently was to inherit a vibrant and successful service from Adrian Tindall. He, Simon Woodiwiss (the unit manager) and Hilary White (the SMR officer), made a...

Worcestershire Archive and Archaeology Service has recently sent its first batch of sound recordings off to be digitised as part of the ‘Unlocking our Sound Heritage’ preservation and access strand of the national ‘Save our Sounds’ project. What is ‘Save our Sounds’ about? Professional consensus is that we have about 15 years in which to...

Thanks to grant funding from Historic England and the Vernacular Architecture Group (VAG) over 2000 slides and photographic negatives from the Charles Archive collection, have now been digitised. Like much of the original archive, recently catalogued and digitised by Worcestershire Archive & Archaeology Service, these slides will be deposited with the Archaeology Data Service (ADS), to...

Our 4th County Archaeologist was Adrian Tindall, who shares these memories. The River Severn was frozen over when I first arrived in Worcester in Christmas 1986. Shivering by an electric fire in Henwick Park lodge, with the water pipes frozen, in an unfamiliar city, I briefly doubted my decision to leave my young family temporarily...