Latest news

  • 5th August 2019
15 Years of Who Do You Think You Are?

Can it really be 15 years since Who Do You Think You Are? hit the screens? Family history has been popular for many years, and TV has tried to use this to create a popular programme for a while, but previous efforts had failed. Partly it is because family history is usually very personal. We...

  • 30th July 2019
An army marches on its stomach

Behind the scenes of the First World War, the Vale of Evesham’s market gardeners toiled away to help feed the nation and British army. Food production was vital to the war effort, but did you know that the First World War was also influential in the rise of market gardening? Feeding into the research currently...

  • 25th July 2019
Charles Archive: Droitwich Walking Trail in Print

The Droitwich timber-framed building trail is now available as a printed leaflet to pick up from around the town. Over the past couple of years we’ve shared about the Charles Archive, the incredible collection of maps, plans, photos and notes by timber-frame architects F.W. ‘Freddie’ and Mary Charles. The did a lot of work over...

  • 19th July 2019
Peace Day – 19 July 1919

19th July is the 100th anniversary of Peace Day, which was declared a bank holiday in Britain by a committee chaired by then Foreign Secretary, Lord Curzon. Although 11 November 1918 saw the end of fighting, the Treaty of Versailles was signed in June (which is why many war memorials have 1914-19 on them). A...

  • 15th July 2019
St Swithun’s Church, Worcester

It is St Swithun’s day today. Most people associate today with the legend that whatever the weather is on 15th July it will remain the same for 40 days, based on the legend of what happened when St Swithun’s bones were moved inside Winchester Cathedral. In Worcester we have a church named after St Swithun,...

  • 2nd July 2019
Launch of Archaeology Resource for Schools

Today (2 July) our archaeology education pack for the Foresters’ Forest HLF project is being launched at Five Acres. The Foresters’ Forest project is managed by Forestry England and is looking at the history and heritage of the Forest of Dean through 37 projects. We have been commissioned to run the archaeology and heritage strand...

  • 26th June 2019
Hidden Histories – event on Sat 29 June

On Saturday come and have a tour of Worcester experiencing art inspired by local history. Over the past month we have been helping the Hidden Histories project by taking local groups on tours of the archives and by proving copies of maps, photos and other documents about the history of Worcester, such as the gloving...

  • 13th June 2019
School Records Workshop

The last in our Exploring Archives series looks at schools records, and takes place Wed 26 June 2-4pm. People are fascinated by these, whether they relate to a school you attended, looking for your ancestors, investigating your local school or generally just delving into the archives looking for stories. We’ll have examples of the some...

  • 12th June 2019
Market Gardening Heritage Project – 1933 Letters by Schoolchildren

As part of the Market Gardening Heritage project, we’re drawing information from various sources to uncover the lives and stories of market gardening, which was vital to the Vale of Evesham throughout much of the 19th and 20th centuries. Alongside recording local memories and investigating the buildings constructed by growers on their grounds (locally called...

  • 6th June 2019
Remembering D-Day

This week events are taking place in the UK and across in France to mark the 75th anniversary of the D-Day Landings, considered to be the largest seaborne invasion in history. Some of the people involved were interviewed 20 years as part of our Second World war oral history project.   Bad weather and secrecy The...