The Dowty Story

Gathering, keeping and sharing Dowty’s heritage

Dowty Group Archive: annual report 1949 (GA ref D8347)

Sitting in a strongroom at Gloucestershire Archives, preserved safely but otherwise inaccessible, is our single largest uncatalogued collection – the Dowty Group Archive. The Archive charts the story of an engineering firm from its origins in George Dowty’s 1930s Cheltenham workshop, through a worldwide expansion and up to the break-up of the Group in the 1990s. As such Dowty’s represents a big part of Gloucestershire’s industrial heritage. And as a major local employer it touched many lives.

Richard III and the City of Gloucester

All eyes will be on Leicester this month for the reburial of Richard III, whose skeleton was found underneath a car park there in 2012. But here in Gloucester we are marking the occasion as well, because before Richard became King, he was the Duke of Gloucester – and after he came to the throne, he granted Gloucester a charter which gave the city rights and privileges it retained right up until 1974.

Corporate Archive Project

From June 2013, two members of the Collections Management Team and a small number of volunteers have been working on the Corporate Archive Project. This involves the reorganisation of all records produced by or associated with Gloucestershire County Council. It is a large collection consisting of over 5000 boxes worth of material. However, the size of the archive clearly reflects the importance of the Council’s role in the lives of all Gloucestershire residents since 1889 up to the present day.