Block by Block: Bridlington’s Buildings

On Saturday, 13th September 2025, East Riding Archives brought our ‘Archiverse Minecraft’ activity to East Riding Leisure Bridlington as part of the Heritage Open Days festival. This year’s theme, Architecture, inspired us to delve into our collections for Bridlington-related building plans and photographs. These served as creative prompts for participants to recreate historic structures within […]

Celebrating Mary Wollstonecraft

This post was published on Mary Wollstonecraft’s 266th birthday- Happy birthday Mary! In February 2025, The Wollstonecraft Society facilitated an inspirational event called ‘The Wollstonecraft Museum’ for 150 Year Nine pupils of Beverley High School celebrating the life and legacy of Mary Wollstonecraft. Mary Wollstonecraft (1759-1797) was a writer, philosopher and advocate of women’s rights […]

Virtual Ecologies: Chalk and Clay

In February 2025, the Virtual Ecologies project team delivered a ‘Chalk and Clay’ workshop at Champney Treasure House exploring the history of chalk in its relation to the unique geology of the East Riding. The work explored chalk as an industrial material, its relationship to the clay and alluvium deposits of the coast, and how […]

Thorngumbald Through Time

In partnership with Thorngumbald Primary School, we have been celebrating “that village yon side of Hedon” (as described in George Sidney Skeggs‘ significant publication “Thorngumbald”). Thorngumbald is often considered as a transient, commuter community, a place where people often pass through when travelling to Hull. We were delighted to find that this curiously-named village, in […]

A Journey Through Time: 70 Years of Archiving East Yorkshire

This year the East Riding Archives and Local Studies service celebrates seven decades of preserving the past!

Creativity Unwrapped

This year’s Heritage Open Days theme ‘Creativity Unwrapped’ was very evocative of the nature of archives. In the research room, we very carefully unbox and unwrap items from their protective packaging, and in the records themselves, the stories of creative personalities are revealed. To explore this topic, we highlighted the fascinating history of some of […]

Stories of Diversity: Adventures in the Archiverse

Archivist Hannah and Martin Batstone (ERYC Senior Policy Officer) were delighted to show local school pupils around our virtual Archiverse Minecraft world for a fun digital history-making workshop on the 14th of June 2023. Our theme for this workshop was ‘about me’ where we celebrated diversity via storytelling. The stories crafted in this workshop will […]

Building An Archiverse: The East Riding Blockdown

The East Riding Blockdown first launched towards the end of January 2022 as an experimental action research project working with young people between the ages of 5-16. We are grateful for our funding and ongoing support from The Audience Agency as part of their wider Digitally Democratising Archives initiative, aimed at bringing together archives with […]

COMING SOON: THE EAST RIDING BLOCKDOWN

We are thrilled to be one of ten projects selected across England who have received funding from The Audience Agency to proceed with our new project The East Riding Blockdown: Contemporary Collecting in Minecraft. Building upon (no pun intended!) our overarching COVID-19 experiences collecting project, the East Riding Blockdown will seek to collect youth experiences […]

Online Exhibition: First World War Lives

The First World War Lives project tells the previously untold stories of over 1,100 local service personnel, researched by our team of volunteers. Using original documents held here at the East Riding Archives, and sources held online such as the census and military records, our project volunteers have uncovered each individual’s life story from birth […]