Gloucestershire Family History Society

24/04/2026

Are you interested in Gloucestershire’s musical heritage? 🎵

Gloucestershire has a remarkable musical history, with a great many renowned events and celebrated musicians hailing from the region. We would like to warmly invite you to our upcoming event “Make a Note!” which is all about music-related records held at Gloucestershire Archives.

This free event will take place from 11am-4pm and feature two talks of the day, for which booking is essential. You are welcome to attend the event for as long or as little as you wish.

What will the event include?

• Document Display of archive records relating to the theme of music, with records ranging from the medieval period to the present day
• Two live talks of the day: one at 13:15 and one at 14:30
• Two choral performances: 12:00 and 15:20
• Free refreshments, donations welcome
• Are you in-tune with your family history? Discover more about your past heritage at the Gloucestershire Family History Centre, open from 10am-4pm

Talks of the day:
• 13:15: 'The Life and Times of Newent Record Producer Joe Meek' by Peter Rochford.
• 14:30: ‘The Eighty Seasons - Rediscovering the History of Painswick Music Society 1946-2026' by Prof. Martin Woodhead.

Learn more about this event and book your place here: https://orlo.uk/Mh1rU

We look forward to seeing you there! 🎼

23/04/2026

New Blog Post: Re-discovering Wolfridge Wood

Development often has a way of burying the landscapes and stories of the past to the point of complete non-recognition. Walking around something as seemingly mundane as a 1970’s housing estate can seem unimpressive, and simply without interest for most people. One such development in Alveston suitably fits this bill, very normal and ordinary, with the gentle comings and goings of modern life. Yet just over 50 years ago this landscape was totally unrecognisable teeming with wildlife and woodlands, largely made up of Wolfridge Wood.

Find out more in our latest blog post: https://orlo.uk/sy1fX

23/04/2026

If you have visited us onsite, you may have seen some of these friendly faces. This lovely photograph showing the majority of our Customer Service team (plus Karen from the Collections Management team) was taken at a recent exciting training trip to , in Cornwall.

Archives & Records Association Scotland - ARA Scotland

20/04/2026

If you’d like to find out how to use FamilySearch to move your research forward and demolish those brick walls, come to an informal session in the Family History Centre in the Heritage Hub, Alvin Street, Gloucester GL1 3DW on Saturday 2 May between 10am and 12pm
Professional genealogist, and our previous Chair, Mia Bennett will lead the event.

This a free, drop in session so no need to book. You’re welcome to bring your own laptop and please create a free login for FamilySearch before you come.

19/04/2026

Today's theme for is so we wanted to take this opportunity to highlight the importance of Digital Preservation.

As record creation has changed over the years, moving away from paper to predominantly digital, we archivists have had to change our approach to record collection too, and its not as simple as you might expect!

Did you know that digital records are much harder to preserve that analogue ones? Once a minute book has been processed and packaged in archival packaging and stored in the correct environmental conditions, it can survive for many hundreds of years! However, the same cannot be said for digital records.

For example, CDs have a shelf life of c.10 years, digital records on thumb drives are prone to bit rot / media degradation, and others become obsolete, whereby the media required to view them is no longer in production.

As such, we have to develop ways to store and manage the digital record throughout its life-cycle, preventing any changes to the original record and ensuring it is accessible for researchers whenever required.

In Gloucestershire Archives we have developed and in-house system, called S**T (S**t is Curation and Trust), which packages a digital records with the required metadata, that in turn ensures the record's long-term preservation can be monitored and verified, in this photograph you can see one of our archivist working on processing so oral history interviews for long term storage.

Archives & Records Association Scotland - ARA Scotland

19/04/2026

South Cerney - continued

This must be one of the most impressive village hall in the County!

It was opened in 1925. Three years previously, Captain E T Cripps, who had acquired an old thatched barn in School Lane, offered the site and the building to the village for conversion to a village hall.

At that time the village had no communal hall that could adequately accommodate the many social gatherings that were now happening in the life of the village. However the state of the barn at that stage showed that some imagination was needed to conceive that this derelict looking er****on was capable of affording the villagers what they had in mind, and they may be excused if they did not immediately jump at what they freely admitted to be a generous offer. There were, however, four solid walls and a wonderful thatched roof which an estimate showed could be converted into a suitable hall for the moderate sum of £660. A committee were then appointed to consider this offer and any alternative proposals but they were soon convinced that the offer by Captain Cripps was much too good to be missed.

with thanks to https://villagehall.southcerneyhalls.org.uk/about/history for this information.

17/04/2026

17/04/2026

17/04/2026

South Cerney - continued

When walking through the village, you are never far from the river Churn.. There were two mills in the village, though there is no evidence of them now, though the Mills Archive site has pictures of the buildings at https://catalogue.millsarchive.org/south-cerney-mill

15/04/2026

Lunatics, Cripples & Incurables talk by Jemma Fowkes, Gloucestershire Archives

11.15am, Sunday 19 April, Blackfriars in Gloucester, FREE

Disability was so often hidden, obscured or misunderstood in the past. In this talk we will uncover the lives of individuals living with disability, finding out about challenges faced through time and on a lighter note, why the Archives has a photograph of a dog playing Bingo!
Please note this talk will use historic language and cover upsetting themes. Find out more here: https://orlo.uk/x687K

Mug shot of William Mann in 1878, aged 19, from the Forest of Dean. William, who was visually impaired, was arrested repeatedly for stealing, drunkenness, and begging. Thanks to Gloucestershire Constabulary for the use of this photograph.