Heritage Focus Day

Working out what you want to do in your career can feel like an impossible challenge. When I was at school, I had no idea what a good choice might be or what I was particularly interested in doing. Everything seemed appealing but nothing was jumping out to me. I wasn’t alone in this. The only people I knew who were certain of what they wanted to do with their lives all wanted to go into medicine. But they were the minority, everyone else was also drawing a blank.

Look at my Big Drawers! It’s the Cabinet of Curiosities.

I am so grateful to have a nose. Without having a nose and its scent detecting abilities, I would, for example, be unable to take in and fully appreciate the delightful, fragrant odours of hyacinth blooms in springtime.

But more importantly, without a nose there would be no way of easily homing in on hot dog stands with their alluring onion- and sausage-based aromas filling the air, acting as a huge smell-flag for me and my stomach to notice and then act upon.

Whilst we’re thinking about enticing food smells, one cannot fail to mention the ever-pleasurable sizzling bacon. Or the homely and comforting freshly baked bread. Recently brewed coffee too, that must be given plenty of consideration.

Actually, put all those three together, preferably into my stomach – bacon, fresh bread and coffee – and me and my nose will be satisfied for the rest of the day.

New faces at Gloucestershire Archives

In this blog post we want to welcome two new faces here at Gloucestershire Archives. We were recently joined by Archivist Briony and Apprentice Archives Assistant Ethan, they have both written a short piece to introduce themselves, read more below.

Gloucestershire Archives accessions, October – December 2023

Amongst the records placed onto the online catalogue in the last quarter was a long-distance traveller, all the way from Australia! A register of cases at the Cotswold Maternity Hospital for the years 1937-1945, it emigrated post-War with one of the former midwives. Recently her daughter contacted the Archives (through Gloucestershire Family History Society) offering to return the register. We are very grateful to her for this initiative, and for offering to pay a fair sum in postage.

Clocking up the air miles…

Goodbyes and legacies

Colleagues and I at Gloucestershire Archives have been delighted to witness the tremendous success of the BAFTA, Oscar and IFTA winning short film, An Irish Goodbye.   Why? Because it is a brilliant film, but also because Tom Berkeley, one of the two writer-directors of this film is the son of our colleague Kate, and former colleague Nick, and lives just round the corner from the Archives. So massive congratulations to Tom and his Belfast co-writer and director, Ross White. The film features two Irish brothers working through a bucket-list following their mother’s death and is both amusing and profound. If you haven’t seen the film, I strongly recommend looking for it on I-player.   

Saturday Service at the Heritage Hub

About this time last year, a decision was taken to resume the Saturday opening of Gloucestershire Archives. It felt such a positive step, after many frustrating months of total closure, due to the pandemic, followed by various versions of user restrictions during the week, as we crawled back to normality. However, even in pre-Covid times, we knew that our Saturday service needed further scrutiny. Who was our intended audience? What type of service was required? Was something different needed to appeal to customers specifically at the weekend? We had always thought that by opening at the weekend, people who weren’t able to visit during the week due to work or other personal commitments would have the opportunity to undertake research. This notion sounds perfectly acceptable on paper but in practice, it wasn’t happening. 

Consequently, a decision to open again on Saturdays, post Covid, could not be taken lightly. We had to justify staff’s time in terms of planning events and being on-site to present them plus have proof that this was a service truly required by the public. Was it truly worthwhile?

#ArchivePeople: Heritage Careers Focus Day

Are you interested in a career in the heritage sector? On Saturday 3^rd June we are hosting our first ever Heritage Career Focus Day at Gloucestershire Heritage Hub! Find out more and book your place here: https://www.heritagehub.org.uk/events/heritage-focus-day/

This event is aimed at people wanting a career in Heritage and is an excellent opportunity to see what archivists, conservators, museum curators, librarians, archaeologists and other heritage based professionals do on a day to day basis.

I am an archivist here at Gloucestershire Archives and I always find it interesting to lean the different story on how people first got involved in archives or heritage. So I asked some of my fellow Archivists to share their story.

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.

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.

Things That Go Bump In The Night

Rachel Wales ACR gets into the Halloween spirit…

As we approach Hallowe’en, we see lots of decorations featuring massive hairy spiders.  As I fished yet another beefy specimen of Tegenaria domestica out of my bathtub the other morning, I wonder if this is because late summer and autumn are the times when we humans start spotting, and screaming at, house spiders as they roam about our kitchens, bathrooms and sitting rooms in search of mates.  Autumn and spiders go hand in hand.