The Hampshire Family Historian | Vol.48 No.3 | December 2021

HGS News

Front cover picture The front cover picture shows St Mary the Virgin Church at Vernham Dean, after a fall of snow in winter. Research Centre Report We are getting much more settled here at Hampshire Record Office, where we are working in partnership with HRO staff, and I am pleased to say several new volunteers have come forward to help us. We have volunteers on our Research Desk in the Search Room at HRO helping our enquirers face to face. The number of people visiting us is increasing, and we are also receiving plenty of research queries via our website. Others are ‘behind the scenes’ in our office, where our main current task is checking and renewing our Research Centre Catalogue, which lists several thousand items. There have been many new additions donated to us that Covid has prevented us from checking and listing. We are now taking the opportunity to check everything. We allocate frequently used books etc to their new ‘homes’ either in our office or the Search Room. Less in demand material is in our accessible storage. This is a huge task and thanks to everyone, led by John

The chancel of the church is Norman in origin, the nave was added in the 12th century and extended after 1420.

Bowman, undertaking this. John will be very pleased to welcome additional cataloguers if anyone else would like to contribute. Similarly, we are updating our unwanted certificates index, and we also hope to see some additional indexes on our website. We have continued some work (home transcribers) on indexing the Britains’ Dying Overseas project during Covid, but hope to expand this, both at home and in the office. Again, if anyone would like to get involved, please do let us know. Our bookstall also now sells our HGS publications here HRO and we have a card machine for purchases. However, we do still take cash and cheques as well, so please contact us if you would like Finally, if you have any queries, or research enquiries do contact us and we will do our best to help you with your research. Chris Pavey HGS Research Centre Manager

We will be open at our new office on Tuesdays and Thursdays only. from 10am to 4pm. HGS Research Centre

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