Blogging a Building (10)

There are aliens and strange structures just metres from my desk. But don’t be alarmed.  I haven’t been beamed from Starship Enterprise to a parallel universe!  The strangers are just asbestos removal experts – back for a second visit.  This time they’re making the under-floor spaces for the new Heritage Hub safe, ready for remodelling work.  And it’s all happening behind closed doors – so there’s no danger.

Meanwhile, Archives staff have been celebrating some good news. The Local Government Association has awarded us £15,000 to develop online customer registration arrangements and streamline our online document ordering system.  These improvements should make it quicker and easier for everyone to access original documents and minimise any queuing times at the new Heritage Hub reception.  Well done to our Digital Preservation & Access Officer, Claire Collins for leading the way on the successful bid!

Jill Shonk

Access & Learning Leader

Blogging a Building (9)

Well, our planned ‘hard hat’ tours of the construction and refurbishment site that’s to become the new onsite Heritage Hub have gone well.  And the learning has been two-way: project stakeholders have been able to glimpse the spaces to come and we have discovered more about the history of our building.

The new evidence of our building’s past comes from two sources.  Firstly, the builders discovered a window above the original front entrance.  It was hiding above an artificial ceiling that that’s been removed in order to change the room layout.  Here it is:

This space will eventually become an office area for Gloucestershire Family History Society volunteers.  The window can be their secret as it’ll be hidden behind a new ceiling by the time they take up residence there.

The second piece of evidence came from a lovely lady, Pam Brogan who took part in one of our tours.  We discovered the experience was actually a trip down memory lane for her, as she was a former pupil of Kingsholm School, the original occupant of our premises.  And she was kind enough to share a photo of herself with her infant school friends, and let us feature it here.  She told us it was taken in the 1940s and the children and their teachers are shown in front of an air raid shelter.

Thanks, Pam, it’s great to be piecing together the history of our building and we’re glad you enjoyed your evening with us!

Do get in touch if you’re reading this and have your own memories of Kingsholm School, as we’d like to use these as part of the interpretive displays (stories about Gloucestershire, Gloucester and Kingsholm) in the Heritage Hub.

Jill Shonk

Access & Learning Leader

Blogging a Building (8)

The dust has settled after the first stages of our building works and this has been another relatively quiet week, other than the removal of some air ducts.  The lull is down to the discovery of  some previously unidentified asbestos and we need to follow a proper process for removing this.  But there’s always a bright side and the current waiting game presents an ideal opportunity for the site tours we were hoping to offer.

First in the queue for tours are our ‘For the Record’ project partners.  And we began yesterday by showing a few key members of the Friends of Gloucestershire Archives around.  The photo below shows us in what’s going to be the new Heritage Hub reception area, wearing our Mickey Mouse shoes and egg head hats, and looking at the architects plans to get a better idea of what the spaces are going to look like.

Left to right: Jill Shonk, Heather Forbes, Liz Jack, Stephen Haygarth and Hilary Haygarth.

We plan to offer bookable tours to anyone who’s interested later on in the building programme.  If you come along we hope that you, like us, will be excited by what’s happening!

Jill Shonk

Access & Learning Leader

 

Blogging a Building (7)

This week our builders have been busying themselves with behind the scenes arrangements  to progress the next stages of construction.  So I thought you might like to look ahead with me, to get a taste of what the Heritage Hub is going to be like when it’s finished.

Firstly, hot off the press, here’s the latest image of how it’s going to look.  Very smart!

We want the inside to be stylish too, and are looking forward to receiving the draft mood boards soon.  These will help us to consider the look and feel of the internal spaces, and to make good interior design choices, bearing everyone’s needs in mind.

Like our builders, we too have been making behind the scenes plans.  But ours are about adorning the building and its surrounding site.  There are two strands to these: internal and external interpretive displays that reveal a potted history of the historic county of Gloucestershire’s cultural and natural heritage; and, on a functional level, information sharing media and signage that will show visitors what the Heritage Hub has to offer.  We’ll be working with stakeholders and community groups to develop these over the coming months.  And we’re eagerly waiting to hear if our allied bid to Arts Council England has been successful, as it would allow us to include more art installations as part of our storytelling.  We should know the outcome in mid May.  ‘Fingers crossed!

Jill Shonk

Access & Learning Leader

 

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