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Our Explore the Past guide really is the perfect stocking filler. And, at 70 pages long, it’s packed full of insight on how you can start researching your past – it really is the gift that keeps on giving! If you’re searching for something unique to buy your nearest and dearest, or even your colleagues,...

Over the years wehave been asked, by parents, about what we hold that can be of assistance to children conducting local history research as part of a school project. This resource is created in response to these enquiries and is adapted from one of our publications, created for teachers, to help children answer the question...

  People visit the Archive Service for many different reasons. We have academic researchers, local history researchers, those looking to settle legal disputes through evidence found and, of course, family history researchers. There are many different motivations for looking into one’s family history, and recently we had the pleasure of assisting a researcher with a...

Worcestershire Archive and Archaeology Service has produced a recipe booklet from documents found with its collections. The book is available to buy from Level 2 of The Hive for £4.95 The idea to produce a recipe books began some time ago when, as so often happens, someone found something funny or interesting held within the...

Our collection of over 1000 boxes of Wills, Inventories, letters of Administration and other papers relating to probates granted in the Consistory Court of the Bishop of Worcester and the Worcester Probate Registry provide a fascinating insight into the lives of Worcestershire residents. Dating from 1493 to 1857, the collection was deposited at the Worcester...

In October I held a ‘Caring for your Documents’ workshop where people brought along their precious letters, certificates and documents from their own family archive.  We talked about the need to protect and preserve these items, and the best ways to go about cleaning and displaying them, as well as the need to store them...

This is the eighteenth in a series of blog posts celebrating the life and work of timber-frame building specialists F.W.B ‘Freddie’ and Mary Charles. Funded by Historic England, the ‘Charles Archive’ project has digitised and made more accessible the Charles Archive collection, which is now accessible at ADS.   This blog examines 31 High Street...

  Archaeologists don’t metal detect, do they? Walk over a ploughed field and you’re bound to see bits of pot and metal sticking out the ground. Artefacts are easily disturbed and moved over time from their original location into the topsoil – metal detecting is an easy way to check for interesting finds missed in...

Our Explore the Past guide is doing a remarkable job at helping people research their roots. But don’t just take our word for it, see what professional genealogist, Emma Jolly, has to say about it…   Our Explore the Past guide is a real treasure – 70 pages of everything you need to know about...

Ridge and furrow earthworks, the remains of former field systems, exist across Worcestershire. They are often overlaid by the straight boundaries of later inclosed fields and form an important part of the landscape character in Worcestershire and the identity of local areas.  The pressure for land for development and changes in agriculture in the second...