Hi everyone! My name is Naomi Taylor and I am the (relatively) new Historic Environment Record and Project Support Assistant (it’s a bit of a mouthful!). I’m an Archaeology and Heritage Studies graduate from the University of Worcester and I started this post at the end of September.
I was born and raised in Worcester, and have never left, so I feel a very strong connection to my home city. This has made getting involved in the HER very exciting and I have been very lucky in my first few months with the events I have been involved in. I jumped straight in with the Virtual Time Travel Trail, the videos of which you can still catch on our YouTube channel, and then on to the Worcester Life Stories book, which has just been released and is available at the Tourist Information Centre and the Museum and Art Gallery shop.
I was already familiar with some of the collection of photographs we have, having been involved with the Worcester Life Stories project earlier on, and I have to say they are one of my favourite aspects of the HER. Everyone loves a photo as they give such a wonderful and unique glimpse into the past. They capture a moment and are one of the few ways to help us imagine ourselves being there, particularly for those of us who have no memories of those times.
For me, my favourite era to look back on is the 1940s and specifically the Second World War. It has been my chosen research area and I am especially interested in the experiences in Worcester. After all, we are on the edge of losing that generation of experiences and memories. For my dissertation, I chose to focus on the condition of our archaeology from that time period, which I’m sure many of a certain generation will be familiar with: pillboxes, anti-tank defences, gun emplacements… At one time there were countless numbers of them, yet now they are few and far between.
Of course, one of the ways we can preserve these archaeological features is by recording them and taking photographs. This is also where our platform Know Your Place comes in. It allows you to upload a photo and pin it to a location on the map, therefore allowing people to get a clearer picture of our city in the past. It’s perfect for, as I mentioned earlier, helping us to imagine the former life of a location. For myself, I have only ever known the town centre to be pedestrianised. One of my favourite things to do is imagine what it was like before that, which I can only do accurately through the help of these photos!
My mum, too, has expressed a desire to walk around the city with the newspaper clippings she has collected, and I hope to do this with her, with the help of Know Your Place when we inevitably struggle to place a photo! So, if you have any family photos that show Worcester in times gone by, consider putting them on Know Your Place. It’s a fantastic resource for preserving our history and archaeology. Perhaps it is something my research could benefit from, too. If you see a bunch of photos of pillboxes pop up on the map, you know who they’re from!
Know Your Place Worcester 