Events & Exhibitions

An exhibition about local Gypsies and Travellers, in their own words, with family photos, opens at the Record Office on 15 July.

‘We didn’t just jump up one day and decide we’ll go in a trailer … we was born into it’, and with extracts like this from oral history interviews, written stories and images, we begin to learn something about the distinctive world of Gypsies and Travellers.  From marriage customs to working lives, from growing up to international travel, this exhibition gives a unique insight into a lifestyle that has changed – a way of life gone forever.  

‘We have had the privilege to live in some beautiful parts of the world, moving about with our trailers behind, free to be what we are.  I hope our children can do the same.’  

Stopping Places is part of a project to record and document the family history of Gypsies and Travellers in Leicestershire.  With funding from Renaissance East Midlands, and in partnership with Leicester City Museums Service, the Record Office is creating a new archive of Gypsy history to preserve the stories and the memories of past traditions and to show how Gypsy life has changed.  

Stopping Places opens at The Record Office on Tuesday 15 July and runs until Thursday 28 August.  

The exhibition is FREE.

An exhibition of Leicestershire rural scenes taken by members of the Leicester Forest Photographic Society.

An exhibition exploring the records left behind by the Church Courts of Leicester Archdeaconry from 1495 onwards.

This project is going to put genealogical material for every settlement in Leicestershire onto www.leicestershirevillages.com.

This could take the form of a parish register transcript or a single family history.

If you are interested in contributing to this project, please contact PAT GRUNDY or LOIS EDWARDS at the Record Office for Leicestershire, Leicester and Rutland, Long Street, Wigston Magna, LEICESTER, LE18 2AH. Tel : 0116 257 1080, Fax : 0116 257 1120 or Email : recordoffice@leics.gov.uk