Visit to the Wiltshire and Swindon History Centre on Friday 24th February at 2pm

About 10 members of the Friends gathered at the Wiltshire and Swindon History Centre last Friday to have an informative guided tour.
What an amazing place it is; situated five minutes walk from the station in Chippenham, the History Centre is a gem.
It's literally a fabulous building, it cost 11 million to build, the same amount as our Central Library in Swindon has state of the art facilities, whether you are interested in researching family history, finding out more about the local area having relics analysed, or reading an old back copy of the Wilts and Herald Gazette.

Here's the notice board outside.

A close up of a Sarsen stone and a photo showing it in the context of the outside of the building.

We were given a very interesting insight into how old books and paper are restored, the oldest we saw was from the 14th Century. The artefact photographed above is a delightful seal, part of which was missing and has now been added very sympathetically.

And here below, photographed through
venetian blinds is the Highworth pot.

Above is an attempt at a photo of the etched horse that appears on every window on the outside of the building.

 And finally on the way back to the station, I took a photograph of the tree in the middle of the main road. Traffic passes on either side of the tree, that's not very clear from the photo, I needed to get two cars going in opposite directions.
 If you missed this trip, have a look on the website below to find out more, and treat yourself to a short trip on the train to get there.
www.wshc.eu