Posted on May 28, 2020 by Fay Curtis.

Penelope Chetwode and ‘the perfect ADC’ (personal assistant)

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…

Posted on May 21, 2020 by Fay Curtis.

A House Through Time: Bristol’s archives take starring role in BBC series

by Jo Vietze, former Senior Archivist The third series of the BBC’s A House Through Time begins next week. Following examination of houses in Newcastle and Liverpool, this year David Olusoga and his team trace the history of a house in Bristol &#821…

Posted on May 19, 2020 by Fay Curtis.

Unlocking Our Sound Heritage: Evacuees in St Levan

by Cara Powell, Unlocking Our Sound Heritage volunteer Cara Powell is completing her BA in History at the University of the West of England. The Unlocking Our Sound Heritage team were lucky enough to have her as a volunteer in 2019-20. Cara worked on a nu…

Posted on May 13, 2020 by Fay Curtis.

Listen to 40 years of art & artists from the Arnolfini archive

by David, Sam and Philippa, from the Unlocking Our Sound Heritage project The first collection held by Bristol Archives that Unlocking Our Sound Heritage (UOSH) digitised was from Arnolfini, Bristol’s contemporary arts centre. 40 years of artists’ ta…

Posted on May 8, 2020 by Fay Curtis.

Bristol’s VE Day celebrations brought to life

On Friday 8 May, we mark the 75th anniversary of VE Day – the end of the Second World War in Europe. On Tuesday 8 May 1945, celebrations took place across the country and Bristol was no exception. Two different audio-visual archives from Brist…

Posted on April 16, 2020 by Fay Curtis.

Archives advice: Preserving audio from a CD

by Samuel Bates, Audio Digitisation Engineer Sometimes, the problem you expect is not the problem you end up with. On the Unlocking Our Sound Heritage project, we are preserving thousands of at-risk audio items. We have cassettes and open-reel tapes,…

Posted on April 6, 2020 by Fay Curtis.

A dose of culture from home

As you may know by now, we have closed all of our museums to help prevent the spread of COVID-19. In the meantime, we are doing all we can to make Bristol’s museum collections available online for our audiences at home and around the world. We’ll b…

Posted on February 18, 2020 by Fay Curtis.

Arnos Vale Cemetery archive now open

By Graham Tratt, Archivist The records of Arnos Vale Cemetery are now available for research at Bristol Archives. The collection documents how this Victorian cemetery developed and records the generations of Bristol people laid to rest in its groun…

Posted on February 14, 2020 by Fay Curtis.

One vast interconnected world: Paul Mellon grant to digitise collection

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…

Posted on January 14, 2020 by Fay Curtis.

Digitising the British Empire & Commonwealth film collection

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…

Bristol's Free Museums and Historic Houses