Wiltshire and Swindon History Centre

[eyman]

I visited the centre earlier in the week. It's located in very modern premises in Chippenham, an easy walk from the station and with free car parking for anyone coming by car. Apart from a good selection of books on military units connected with Wiltshire, as you might expect, and a range of other reference tools such as Who was Who, what really impressed me was the free access to resources on Ancestry.co.uk.

This means that you can look at and download things such as WW1 service and pension records and medal index cards for nothing - while I didn't try it myself, I think the computer terminals have USB ports for you to use with a flash drive. The service is also available at all Wiltshire Council's libraries, although you may need to be a Wiltshire resident to use computers at the libraries. Well done to Wiltshire! The availability of this facility saves either the expense of a trip to Kew to look at service records for nothing or paying Ancestry for the privilege of downloading public records at home.

You can find more info on opening hours (Tues to Sat) and the ID you need to take to be issued with a reader's pass at this link:

http://www.wshc.eu/

Ian

[Martyn Gibson]

Ian,

You can also access Ancestry for free via the Library's web service. Agree with you though about the centre it is a great resource for Wiltshire.

Martyn