Archives and local studies

Anyone who is interested in local history and archive material can download and use these resources. Teachers, students and parents can use them as a part of their lessons or just for fun.

How can you find out about the people who lived in Medway in the past?

You may need to use archives, which contain:

• documents that were originally printed or written by hand;
• photographs or drawings;
• recordings of people’s voices.

You can study them to find out what life was like years ago.

In Strood, Medway Council holds a huge collection of archives which date back many hundreds of years. If you visit the search room, you will find all kinds of people making their own exciting discoveries about the past. They might be:

• researching their family history;
• consulting the notes taken at past council meetings;
• doing a project about life in the workhouse;
• finding out when local societies were founded;
• writing a book about working on the river;
• wondering what their school was like a hundred years ago.

How to start

There is no charge for working in the search room or for looking at records. You just need to make an appointment and apply for a free reader’s ticket. You can:

• find out the opening hours, location and contact details by planning your visit;
• search the archives on the CityArk database;
• try a National Archives online tutorial on reading old handwriting (www.nationalarchives.gov.uk/palaeography) or
• just follow one of the links at the top of this page.

Sponsoring archives

Medway Archives offers organisations an opportunity to become part of its future by sponsoring a Medway Archives scanning project to enlarge its online image database. Find out more about the proposal for potential sponsors (pdf 483KB). To use this file, you will need Adobe Acrobat Reader. If you do not have this on your computer, please use our advice page.

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