The Festival of Archaeology takes place up and down the country from 16th to 31st July. What better opportunity to celebrate the wonderful website that is ‘Know Your Place’ and to give you a flavour of the information it offers!

So what is Know Your Place?
Know Your Place is an online mapping resource that allows you to search through historic maps, images and information for the west of England. You can explore it by going to http://www.kypwest.org.uk

How is it funded?
The project has been possible thanks to a National Heritage Lottery ‘Sharing Heritage’ grant, the Great Weston Heritage Action Zone and the High Street Heritage Action Zone.

What is the Sharing Heritage project?
This has been a three year-long partnership project between Weston Museum supported by Weston-super-Mare Town Council and North Somerset Council. Since June 2019, our wonderful volunteers at Weston Museum have been working hard, to research and upload images and historical information to the community layer of the website. They have also held two large photographic exhibitions and done pop up information sessions in the museum and at libraries across North Somerset.

What is the purpose of the project?
The project aim is to enhance the community layer of the existing website, by creating new entries and adding further detail to existing entries. The historical information is a useful planning tool, but also has educational value too.

Can I find out more on social media?

The following are run by our colleagues in the North Somerset Heritage team, who upload photographs and validate information on different historical themes.
https://www.facebook.com/groups/638416113618702/
https://twitter.com/kypnorthsom?lang=en

How can I get involved?
You don’t have to be a museum volunteer to upload information. If you have a photograph or some historic information that you would like to share, you can upload it to the community layer yourself by following the online instructions. http://www.kypwest.org.uk/explore-the-map/training-resources/

Don’t worry about making a mistake, as the entries are checked by North Somerset’s historic environment team before they go live.

In the meantime, happy browsing! You can spend a lot of time exploring the website and learning new things about local history.

For information about the Festival of Archaeology itself, go to https://www.archaeologyuk.org/festival.html and watch out for our other blogs.