Come along to The Story (Durham County Archives), Friday 12 December, 12.30pm to 5pm, for an opportunity to develop archival skills and interact with historical material from The Winterton Hospital (formerly known as Durham County Lunatic Asylum) Collection.
The workshop will include:
- A display class with historical material from the Winterton Collection (patient registers, illustrated casebooks, post-mortem reports) exploring how to use them and what they can tell us.
- An illustrated history of Durham County Asylum.
- Introduction to palaeography skills (reading old handwriting) session with an activity using original documents
- Introduction to digital resources session with activity using Ancestry records.
This is the first archival skills workshop for up to ten volunteers as part of a new volunteer research project “Melancholy, Mania and Metallurgy: Unlocking the Asylum Archives” which be uncovering the stories of North Pennines lead miners and their families who spent time in County Asylums.
There will be similar workshops held at Carlisle Archives and Northumberland Archives early next year.
(Please note that this project is for adults only. Historical documents use outdated terminology to describe disability and mental health conditions and may also contain material that some people find offensive or distressing.)
Please sign up using the volunteer platform Better Impact
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