Latest news

  • 7th November 2018
Explore Your Archive English launch 2018

Worcestershire Archive and Archaeology Service, at The Hive, is hosting the English launch of the 2018 Explore Your Archive campaign on Saturday, 24th November. Join us for a day of FREE activities to discover the wonders held within our collections.     Explore Your Archive is a year-long campaign which aims to celebrate the unique...

  • 7th November 2018
The Charles Archive – Worcester’s High Street

This is the seventeenth in a series of blog posts celebrating the life and work of timber-frame building specialists FWB ‘Freddie’ and Mary Charles. Funded by Historic England, the ‘Charles Archive’ project aims to digitise and make more accessible the Charles collection. If you want to explore the High Street yourself we have downloadable trail...

  • 6th November 2018
Find of the Month – October 2018

  Keep your eyes open! You don’t need to be an archaeologist to discover fascinating finds. This month’s star artefact was found by a volunteer on our community excavation in the Forest of Dean. During October, we ran a dig at Ruardean Castle – a nationally important and protected monument – as part of the...

  • 4th November 2018
Remembrance at The Hive

Coinciding with the centenary of the end of the First World War, a new exhibition is in The Hive, and special events are planned for the 9th and 10th November. The People’s Collection arrived at The Hive this week, and runs until 12 November, having visited venues across Worcestershire since May 2018. The exhibition features...

  • 3rd November 2018
Humans of the Ice Age

  Our species evolved in an Ice Age world. 99% of the span of human life in Britain falls within the Ice Age. There have been at least four human species in Britain over the last million years. For most of human history, there have been multiple human species living at the same time. Today,...

  • 2nd November 2018
Before Cathedral Square: Dig Lich Street

  All analysis of the Cathedral Square excavation is now finished and a report has been produced. As the report is very long and technical, we thought we’d summarise our results here too. The Dig Lich Street blog is also still available. In 2015, an archaeological dig took place prior to the Cathedral Square redevelopment....

  • 31st October 2018
The Charles Archive: Mary Charles

This is the sixteenth in a series of blog posts celebrating the life and work of timber-frame building specialists FWB ‘Freddie’ and Mary Charles. Funded by Historic England, the ‘Charles Archive’ project aims to digitise and make more accessible the Charles Archive collection. In this post we will be looking at the life and work...

  • 30th October 2018
Hippos & mammoths in Worcestershire?

  The Ice Age was not always cold: hippos once wallowed in Worcestershire’s warm pools. Over the last 2.5 million years – a period we call ‘The Ice Age’ and known geologically as the Quaternary – the climate fluctuated between icy glacials and warmer interglacials. As temperatures rose species were able to expand into new...

  • 29th October 2018
Concrete and Gold – A Poem Inspired by WAAS

Worcestershire Archive and Archaeology Service are delighted to present “Concrete and Gold” a poem  we commissioned from Worcestershire Young Poet Laureate, CJ.  It was the idea of Victoria Bryant, Archive & Archaeology Manager. “I took CJ around the Hive  one sunny Saturday afternoon  in June this year.  We wandered through the light bright public areas and...

  • 26th October 2018
Reconstructing Lost Landscapes

  How can we visualise lost landscapes? We start with the evidence. Scientific dating techniques and geological deposit mapping help us to work out how the hills and rivers changed over time – this gives us the basic lie of the land. The bones of large mammals can then tell us which species inhabited the...