I’m sitting in the bright Staffordshire History Centre, watching the team put together a new exhibit about our county’s mineral wealth: coal, salt, limestone, agriculture, and so on. Every few months, we have a change of scene, and a new central exhibit arrives.

I am a new volunteer. I have loved local history since I was a child. This place is my idea of a haven. From Lotus Shoes and Evode to William Palmer in the main exhibition space, through to the beautiful rooms of the William Salt Library, our collection spans many centuries, highlighting how Staffordshire has contributed to the UK and the wider world over and over again.

William Salt loved family history and documents of all types. He commissioned artists to record our county’s landscapes and building bling in engravings and printings. Before his death, he collected over 33,000 pieces, mainly relating to Staffordshire, and the William Salt Library Trust has protected and extended his collection ever since!

A library full of gems, where else can you spend time reading most of the London Illustrated News or 19th Century Mining Journals around the Grand Jury table from the Stafford Shire Hall, an item of furniture not only witness to significant trial decisions but meetings that propelled our grand county forward. 

If all this leaves you hungry for more, there are the Staffordshire Archives to explore! Find out more and get your free Archive card via the Staffordshire Archives and Heritage website. A whole world of documents is available upon request.

So why not come along and see us? A tonne of local history and a warm welcome await.

Lorraine – History Centre Welcome Volunteer