Deciphering difficult handwriting
Elizabethan handwriting can look very daunting, but it hides a mass of valuable information for family and local historians.
With a little help, you too can learn to understand old texts and unlock exciting secrets of the past. The skill of reading old handwriting, or ‘palaeography’, is an invaluable one for all sorts of historians, including family and local historians.
On Saturday 13 March, Warwickshire County Council is holding a workshop on Palaeography: The Next Steps. This hands-on workshop, which takes place at the County Record Office, will provide advice and practice at reading old handwriting, and will help to open up fascinating documents from the sixteenth century.
The workshop will be run by experienced local historian and expert in old handwriting Christine Hodgetts and will offer help to those who find sixteenth century documents difficult to approach.
“Palaeography: The Next Steps” is being held on Saturday 13 March between 9.15 am and 12.15 pm at Warwickshire County Record Office, Priory Park, off Cape Road, Warwick. Tickets cost £12.00 and booking is strongly recommended, by calling 01926 738959 Tuesday to Saturday.
Rowan Fisher, Learning and Outreach Officer at Warwickshire County Record Office, says: “Our workshops are hugely popular and we hope this course will help to make our records more accessible to everyone.”
Warwickshire County Record Office is involved in safeguarding, managing and developing Warwickshire’s archives so that they can be accessed, interpreted and enjoyed by all those with an interest in Warwickshire’s past and its people. We hold records dating from the twelfth century up to the twenty first.
Visit http://www.warwickshire.gov.uk/countyrecordoffice for more information on general opening times, directions and other useful information.