Latest news

Happy Windrush Day 2022!   This is the fifth national celebration and marks 74 years since the SS Empire Windrush carried the first Caribbean migrants to the UK to help re-build Britain after WWII. Ancestors From Overseas Worcestershire Archive has two books of relevance in our reference library. These provide some useful background information and pointers...

A new app has been launched on the Google Play and Apple Stores about market garden heritage in the Vale of Evesham. It is part of the culmination of the Market Gardening Heritage Project, funded by National Lottery Heritage Fund and led by Worcestershire Archive and Archaeology Service. The app brings together research and oral...

This week marks the last of my archivist traineeship with Worcestershire Archive & Archaeology Service. For the last nine months, the archive team have taken me on as a Trainee Archivist – training me up in all the key aspects of what makes an archive function, and allowed me to discover why archives function, the...

We are running an after-school Heritage Club with the Jewellery Quarter Cemeteries Project so youngsters from the academy and other schools, can look into the people commemorated and their part in building Birmingham

The Queen visited Worcester in 1980 to present Maundy Money as part of the traditional Maundy Thursday service. This visit is well remembered by local people.

We look back to The Queen's visit to Worcestershire in 1957. Within the archives we have two boxes of documents and correspondence from the Lord Lieutenant about the arrangements, telling the story behind organising a Royal Visit.

GRT History month has been celebrated in the UK since 2008 with the aim of tackling prejudice, challenging myths and amplifying the voices of Gypsies, Roma and Travellers in wider society. Head to the  Gypsy, Roma and Traveller History Month 2022 – Friends, Families and Travellers (gypsy-traveller.org) page for information and advice. Gypsy Romany and...

For the Platinum Jubilee we have created a display in The Hive featuring The Queen's visits to Worcestershire over the years. We are also sharing the photos here on our website.

Our archivists have recently completed the cataloguing of a large collection originally belonging to Henry Usborne, MP for Birmingham and activist for world peace. His records are fascinating for anyone interested in British post-war politics, international governments, or responses to the threat of Nuclear Armageddon. Henry Charles Usborne [1909-1996] was a Birmingham MP, politician, lobbyist,...

Here in the archives we have 12 miles of shelves of archives covering 900 years. When we opened in the Shire Hall in 1947 deposit number 1 was Worcestershire Quarter Sessions (a combination of a local court and forerunner to the County Council, having a role overseeing roads and bridges). We’ve recently received deposit number...