History Room

The South Staffordshire Archive began life as the Wombourne Local History Room. It arose from a conversation between May Griffiths and Simon Keeling in 2007 about the need for Wombourne and surrounding Parishes to have a facility where documents and items could be stored for use as reference documents by local people.

 

After many months of searching facilities were offered at Wombourne Library to house the facility. Dr. Trevor Raybould became the first ‘curator;’ of the facility and oversaw the collections and cataloguing of documents, maps and other items.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Margaret King is spending many long hours typing contents and indexes for the items written by May Griffiths. How lucky we are to have such erstwhile volunteers!

 

The room is now available for use by prior arrangement with the library. You will need to be a library member, and will need your library card with you in order to use the room. You will be asked to sign in, and sign out when you have used the room. CCTV is installed and records 24-hours a day.

 

If you have any items for the room please take them to Wombourne Library. The Village will be most grateful, whether they are letters, photographs, maps or other information.

 

 

Here’s where we are now:

31st August 2009:
After much hard work by all the volunteers the Wombourne & District Local History Room is due to be opened by Sir Patrick Cormack M.P. on Thursday 3rd September. This is a momentous day for the Village and surrounding area.

 

21st March 2009:

The Archives first Open Day. It went very well indeed. Aruond 70 people visited and photographs will be posted here soon.

 

26th February 2009
We are pleased to announce that the Local History Room will be holding an Open Day on 21st March 2009 between 10am and 1pm. The Room will be open for all to peruse and items will be displayed in the Community Room at the rear of the Library in the Community Centre. All are welcome, members and non-members alike. This is your chance to see the work that has been taking place over the past 18-months and to inspect some of Wombourne and the surrounding area’s history.

 

2nd December 2008

Shelving has now been installed. Photocopying of some documentation is underway and we are on track for a March 2009 opening.

 

15th October 2008

Wombourne Parish Council have donated £500 to the LHR for the installation of shelves. Further funds are expected shortly for installing CCTV equipment, enhancing the security of the documents in the room.

 

15th June 2008

We are now back in the LHR. Simon Keeling and Trevor Raybould have installed some of the shelving, although this now needs to be fixed to the wall. The Wolverhampton Chronicle which have been donated too us are now stored in an acceptable conditions. Trevor has started a catalogue and indexing system which can be used to list new acquisitions.

 

13th April 2008

The room is currently being used for storage by the Library whilst the Community centre is refurbished. We hope to get the room back in May.

 

19th January 2008

We now have a collection of Wolverhampton Chronicles from the 1800’s for use in the Local History Room. The newspapers are currently being stored at Wombourne Library,

 

18th January 2008—

The room has now been decorated and the shelves should be installed by the middle of February. We are hoping that we will be able to start storing items in the room from March. Dr. Trevor Raybould has agreed to be coordinator for the room and will supervise its establishment and facilitate the organisation of volunteers.

 

16th November 2007—funds in place, ready to go. Need to get the room decorated and shelving installed. People already leaving documents at the library for keeping in the room when complete. Volunteers will begin photocopying documents shortly.