NEWS AND EVENTS

News
Somerset Heritage Centre events
Friends of Somerset Archives events
Somerset Heritage newsletters

News in brief

Closed Period 2012
We had our annual two weeks' closed period from 23 January to 3 February.  This is our chance to carry out large projects and stocktaking that we cannot do while we are open to the public. 

This closed period, our tasks included:
Cataloguing, sorting and labelling 73 boxes of building control plans, for Keynsham Urban District Council and Clutton Rural District Council
Sorting and numbering all 72 boxes of the newly-catalogued Somerville Collection (DD\SVL)
Deep cleaning the microfiche readers and tidying up the fiche drawers 
Re-organising several collections in the strongrooms, including local studies material, Estate Duty wills, County Architects’ plans and Mendip Hospital records   
Creating a new school session on reading old handwriting, aimed at secondary school pupils, and preparing Victorian local study resources for primary schools.

If you would like to know more about our closed period, please see our Closed Period leaflet. 
 

Reboxing building control plans
Feedback - You Said, We Did
We try to give you the best possible service we can.  As part of this, we regularly review the feedback given to us and try to make changes accordingly.  To see a summary of what we have done recently, please see our "You Said, We Did" leaflet for 2011.

'Tree of Life' sculpture at the Museum of Somerset

 Museum of Somerset opens, Thursday 29 September 2011
On Thursday 29 September, the Museum of Somerset opened at Taunton Castle, following a £6.93m redevelopment.

Among the many treasures and extraordinary objects on display, the Museum features several documents from Somerset's archives.  These include the bishop's register of Ralph of Shrewsbury, showing the desperate situation in Somerset at the time of the 1348 Black Death, and Judge Jeffreys' medical bill for treatment received while presiding over the infamous Bloody Assizes in 1685. 

To find out more about the museum, see the Museum of Somerset website. 

Events

For details of Somerset Heritage Service events taking place in 2012, please see our events page on the Somerset County Council website. 

Tithe map

The Friends of Somerset Archives hold their own events, at the Heritage Centre and elsewhere, for members and others who are enthusiastic about finding out about Somerset's past.  The first event for 2012 was an afternoon exploring tithe maps.  The next events will be a tour of Wells City Archives on Tuesday 24 April and a treasure hunt around the Museum of Somerset.

The Friends are also supporting the work of the Archives & Local Studies Service through their two projects: transcribing Somerset's tithe apportionments and carrying out preservation work on the Dickinson collection.

To find out more about the Friends - or if you would like to get involved - please see the Friends of Somerset Archives website (new window)
   

Heritage Newsletters

To find out what's going on in the rest of the Heritage Service, why not take a look at the Heritage newsletters?