By the British Empire & Commonwealth Collection team The British Empire and Commonwealth Museum was an independent museum in Temple Approach, Bristol, which was open to the public between 2002 and 2008. In 2012, following the museum’s permanen…

by Pat Ellingham, Archives volunteer Our volunteer, Pat Ellingham, found this story of the young Penelope Chetwode (later Lady Betjeman) in the photograph albums of Geoffrey Kellie, part of the British Empire & Commonwealth Collection. There’s a defin…

by Nicky Sugar, Archivist Throughout 2019, staff from the British Empire & Commonwealth Collection at Bristol Archives worked on a project to open up access to some of our oldest photographic collections. This was generously funded by the Paul Me…

by Jayne Pucknell, Archivist The digitising of some of our most important or unusual films from the British Empire and Commonwealth film collection started in July 2019, and will run to autumn 2020. We have around 2,000 films in the British Empire and C…

by Pat Ellingham, Archives volunteer I’ve been travelling to India for over 20 years and love the culture and landscape of this astonishing country. It’s one of the reasons why my role as a volunteer on the British Empire & Commonwealth Collection at…

by Nicky Sugar, archivist of the British Empire and Commonwealth Collection Last year we reported on a research trip to Kenya by Dr Liz Haines and Dr Neil Carrier of the University of Bristol. They made contact with academics and curators in Nairobi to e…

by Pat Ellingham, Archives volunteer I’ve been a volunteer with the British Empire and Commonwealth Collection for just over a year and one of the pleasures has been the involvement with stories of lives connected with Empire, a form of time-travel I’m …