Innovation in Gloucester in the mid-20th century: cataloguing the records of the Corporation of Gloucester

Since April 2022 I have been working on a project to catalogue the 20^th century records of the Corporation of Gloucester, which cover a crucial period for the development of the city up to 1974. Along the way I’ve discovered all sorts of things about how new technologies such as the motor car and telephones affected the city from the 1920s onwards, how the Corporation promoted Gloucester as a suitable site for industry, and how an early aviation pioneer inspired the creation of what is now Gloucestershire Airport.

Death & Taxes!

It’s said that only two things are certain in life: death and taxes.  As we hurtle headlong towards the end of the financial year, we thought it might be interesting to know exactly why we have this current system whereby the calendar year starts on 1 January, but the tax year starts on 6 April.

Memories of an evacuee’s time in Barnwood, Gloucester by David Jones

We love hearing about individual peoples experiences in history. So obviously we were very excited when Peter Jones sent us the story of his fathers experience of being an evacuee.

Photograph of David Jones and a local girl called Bobbie Peckham

My name is Peter Jones, I live in Gloucestershire. My dad David Jones was born on 12 March 1932 to parents William and Laura Jones (nee Hill) in Nechells, Birmingham. He was one of eight children and when war came in September 1939 they were evacuated to Barnwood in Gloucester. His two older siblings were of working age and stayed in Birmingham. Here follows his story (my comments in italics).

Uncovering Queer Stories at Gloucestershire Archives

Last year we hosted two workshops with artist Tom Marshman looking at uncovering queer stories within our collections. For LGBTQ+ history month I want to share two of these stories with you.

It can sometimes be difficult to uncover the stories of LGBTQ+ people throughout history, due to the stigma and laws prosecuting people who identified under the LGBTQ+ umbrella. We started our search by looking though Gloucestershire newspapers, and this is how we found both Chummy and Charley Wilson.

Cataloguing The Barnwood House Hospital Collection

Barnwood House Hospital was established around the early 1800s and operated as a private mental asylum until its closure in 1968. The impact of the hospital on the community of the City of Gloucester and indeed it’s national reputation over many years at the forefront of the treatment of mental illness cannot be underestimated. The ethos of the hospital can be demonstrated by the hospital’s rule book stating that “Because they are insane, the patients are not to be treated with less respect than they would be entitled to if they were of sound mind and at liberty” and “They are not the less ladies and gentlemen because they are unsound in mind”. 

D3725/1/167/4: Photograph of Barnwood House and grounds, including a few staff and patients [late 19th century].

Gloucestershire Archives accessions, July-December 2022

Happy New Year from all at Gloucestershire Archives and our Heritage Hub partners.

This blog details accessions received at Gloucestershire Archives during the second half of 2022. These can be from any place, person or organisation in Gloucestershire and South Gloucestershire.

In that time we added 226 new accessions onto our online catalogue. This includes oral reminiscence recordings with members of different communities in Gloucester; documents concerning the death of Queen Elizabeth II and the Proclamation of King Charles III; research papers of local historians; Gloucester Rugby Football Club matchday programmes; cinema and theatre programmes; short films and other material concerning the Kindertransport hostel in Gloucester; records of the Ducarel family of Newland House; and Witts family papers, including correspondence and papers relating to the army and estate and finance, 20th century.

Life before the internet

I was nineteen before the internet reached me. So I have little memory of what it means to be in an adult world without the trappings of the World Wide Web. Like so many others, I run my life from my family iPad: online shopping, banking, travel plans and research, to name just a few areas. And it’s always intrigued me how people managed such areas of their life without the internet. And that’s when I discovered collection D10423. 

New Gloucestershire Archives Website!

Observant users of the Gloucestershire Archives website will have noticed that the site has been looking somewhat different for the past couple of weeks. Over the past year, we have been working hard behind the scenes to update, refresh and generally overhaul the site.   The last review was in 2016 and since then the site had grew like Topsy resulting in a lot of duplicated information, and many rabbit holes to get lost down!

Moving to pastures…old, by Ally McConnell

I started organising the blog rota back in April this year, keen to re-introduce some form of consistency for the blogs that would re-invigorate the blog site and also encourage as many staff as possible to contribute to what is a key way of letting people know the sorts of things we get up to as the Gloucestershire Heritage Hub. As part of this, whenever someone left I asked them to do a “round-up” blog detailing the sort of work they’d been doing. We heard from Sally Middleton on her retirement, and we heard more recently from Laura Cassidy, our graduate trainee, as she went off to do her postgraduate course to be an archivist. I knew Sally was retiring when I set up the blog, so got her in quickly for a round-up. I knew when Laura was leaving her fixed term contract, so I pencilled her in for when she left in August. Little did I know that I’d be writing my own for November! Still, this is what has happened, so here goes – what have I done since September 2017?

Pause for Reflection, by Claire Collins

In the autumn, colleagues from Gloucestershire Archives have been showcasing our digital preservation work at a couple of conferences. The first the Archives and Records Association conference was about ‘Facing Forward: Post-pandemic recordkeeping – change, challenge, choice’ and the second was the international conference on digital preservation (iPres) focusing on ‘Data for all, for good, for ever: Let Digits Flourish’