Blogging a Building (6)

This week we’ve been doing a bit of time travelling, journeying between the present and the 1970s when our building reached the end of its days as Kingsholm School. It’s been a low budget trip as we haven’t needed a TARDIS or the Time Lords’ other advanced technology.  Instead, our trusty time portal has been some perfectly preserved photos that are in our collections, which means you can enjoy the tour too!

Cloakroom area then research room; the entrance to the new Heritage Hub will be on the right.

Gym then strongroom for outsize items; the wall to the left will be removed to create a flexible volunteer workspace that links to the new research room.

This area is soon to become the new Archives research room; most of the internal walls will be removed to create it.  The right hand wall behind the red fire extinguisher is the other side of the wall on the left in the images immediately above.

More school day clues: playground tarmac under the concrete footing, an inkwell and marbles.

And finally the most up to the minute news: the tell-tale photo below shows the Horsa (hut) featured in last week’s post has finally bolted and we’re ‘ready for the off’ with works to lay the foundations of our new strongrooms!

Come back next week for another update.

Jill Shonk

Access & Learning Leader

Blogging a Building (5)

 

So, what’s been happening this week? Well, our builders have removed the giant slab that formed the base of the Horsa Hut they demolished last week.  The excavator swapped its careful claw for a pummelling pecker and broke it into tiny pieces.  Result!  You can see, but not hear (unlike those of us working onsite!), this for yourself from the images below – also by clicking on this video link: https://youtu.be/Y6hKgdm3s90

These works are all part of the groundworks needed to prepare the way for the three new specialist storage rooms (‘strongrooms’ in archives-speak) that are going to be built onto the back of our main building. They also involved an unexpected rescue operation: saving and re-homing a displaced hedgehog, now safe in our Archives Support Officer, Jenny’s garden and enjoying the company of other prickly friends.

Recently rescued hedgehog happily snoozing

Back inside, the inner entrance door to the old Archives reception has been removed and the builders are ready to knock down some walls to create the new Heritage Hub spaces. They’ll be able to get on with this as soon as they have the necessary propping design (another new term for my construction vocabulary).  I’m discovering there’s a lot more to this building malarkey than meets the eye!

 

Jill Shonk

Access & Learning Leader

Blogging a Building (4)

As hoped, there’s been plenty of visible action this week!

Inside, our builders have begun the process of removing internal walls to create the new Archives research room and linked volunteer workspaces. And the view from the corridor outside my office door has changed, as you can see from the image below.

Former Archives reception area, leading to former research room

In its current state, it’s easy to imagine how the building must have worked when it was home to Kingsholm School. More so if we add in the reminiscences of former pupils – apparently the long, wide corridor doubled up as a gym!

If you look closely at the image you’ll also spot the walls that are due to be removed as works progress (the blue ‘OUT’ lettering is the giveaway), so we can begin to see what the building should look like when it reopens as Gloucestershire Heritage Hub.

Outside, the landscape has changed dramatically! The Horsa Huts next to the railway track have gone, freeing up space for a new access route to our collections storage areas.  It’s been a fascinating learning experience, watching the Huts (formerly a conservation lab and archaeology store) disappear: I was expecting to see everything flattened in a dramatic swoop but I was wrong.  Instead, an excavator operator carefully deconstructed the Huts using a muncher (‘get me’ with my new vocabulary!), picking off the different construction materials and sorting them into piles, ready for recycling.  You can see this for yourself if you click on this link: https://youtu.be/PTVW5-ar1iw

Bye bye, old conservation lab

Demolition almost complete

 

‘All very exciting.  More next week!

Jill Shonk

Access & Learning Leader

Blogging a Building (3)

Earlier this week I happened to glance through the window of one of our decommissioned office spaces. And I saw the strangest sight: a blue polythene tunnel leading to the door of one of our outbuildings and, just outside it, a weird looking being, not unlike an astronaut.

“What’s going on?” I wondered. “Are we hosting Sci-Fi productions as a new income generation scheme?  Or maybe I’ve missed headline news about a zombie apocalypse in Gloucester?”

Thankfully, the aliens hadn’t landed and there was a simple explanation for the tunnel and the man in coveralls – asbestos removal. This work is taking place in both our main building and the Horsa huts opposite the old overflow parking area.  It is an essential part of our building programme and is being carried out by experts.  Once it’s been completed, it will allow our builders to push on with the removal of internal walls (to create new Heritage Hub spaces) and demolish the Horsa huts (to provide a new onsite access route).  All being well, we should see some of this action next week.  Meantime, “Live long and prosper”!

These photos show the controls needed to remove asbestos from a floor duct. The route is sealed to prevent the escape of fibres.  Workers take a shower in the mobile unit after they have taken off their overalls and masks, which they put into sealed plastic bags.

Sub-zero storage solution for snaps

As Collections Care Conservator at Gloucestershire Archives, I recently attended a training course on the Conservation of Photographs. It was taught by Susie Clark, one of the UK’s leading experts in this field, who stressed that certain types of photographs and photographic negatives benefit from being stored at freezing temperatures, as this slows down the rate of deterioration.

So we decided it would be good to provide this enhanced level of care for some of the Archives’ valuable yet vulnerable photographic collections. And, knowing walk-in freezer rooms are expensive to create and maintain, we decided to opt for a more cost-effective and practical solution – two free-standing commercial freezers, one small and one large, sourced from a Gloucester firm.  These arrived on Thursday 23 February.

Our new freezers feature strong adjustable metal shelves, an auto defrost function, a digital temperature display so we can monitor the temperature inside each freezer, big castor feet so they can be moved around, and lockable doors.

As well as being an effective means of preservation, freezing is also a proven and chemical-free way of killing off insect pests like wool moths and “bookworms” (the larvae of various species of wood boring beetles). There’s always the possibility of us needing to do this as some of the unique material that comes our way can be infested with pests, as you can see from the image below. Thankfully, we now we have a better way of dealing with them!

This photo shows the cover of a book that was recently given to Gloucestershire Archives. Because it had been stored previously in a damp environment, it was severely damaged by mould and by the larvae of one species of wood-boring insect, possibly the common furniture beetle.

 

 

 

Blogging a Building (2)

‘Now for the second entry in my trusty virtual diary…

This week we’ve been giving a bit more thought to the ‘fit out’ of the new Heritage Hub.  We’ve been approaching this from a couple of angles: fine tuning the specifications for all the rooms and sussing out some of the freestanding furniture we’re going to need.

Unbelievably, our refurbishment and construction plans involve fifty rooms!  Admittedly, ten are WCs but it’s still a lot of data to consider – 166 documents worth, to be precise.  Heather, our head of service has been studying this to ‘double check’ everything’s going to be exactly right for our needs.  The dossier includes plans, elevations, sections, engineering drawings and room lists, and it covers everything from the locations of hundreds of plug sockets to types of doors (24 different styles, who’d have thought it?).  It seemed like we were fitting out a hotel!

Heather Forbes poring over plans for the Heritage Hub

As for the stuff that’ll be going into the rooms, we’ve been thinking about the sort of furniture we’re going to need for people to access audio visual records or hold effective one to one conversations in busy parts of the Hub.  We wanted to get this right so we enlisted the help of two of the Archives’ volunteer buddies and asked them to sound out (excuse the pun!) the acoustic furniture at the University of Gloucestershire’s Business Hub and Bishops Cleeve Library.  This was a really useful things to do (good fun too) and we now know exactly what to buy.  Thank you, ladies!

Heather Forbes, Maureen Anderson and Liz Jack in the acoustic meeting pod at the University of Gloucestershire

Heather with volunteer buddies, Maureen Anderson and Liz Jack at the University of Gloucestershire.

Liz and Maureen testing the acoustic chairs in Bishops Cleeve Library

Liz (left) and Maureen (right) at Bishops Cleeve Library.  These chairs were a firm favourite!

We were also able to pick up some useful ideas on our travels, like the e-signing in arrangements at the UoG Business Hub.

Heather, Maureen and Liz signing in at the University of Gloucestershire hub

Message on the University hub computer screen after signing in

Heather, Maureen and Liz signing in at the UoG Business Hub

We’re hoping to introduce something similar in the Hub and have submitted a funding application to see if we can make this a reality.

‘More next week….

Jill Shonk

Access & Learning Leader