Right now in some storage facility there will be a box containing a decent tablecloth and six wine glasses (two of them will be the wrong size to fit in with the others) and a faded colour photograph of some people’s parents outside a house long since sold in a hurry. And no one will be going to collect it this week or probably next either.
Storage units are a kind of accidental census, revealing the contents of individual units to reveal unexpected snapshots of a city’s lives. Some storage units will contain the remnants of divorces, others will hold the belongings of the deceased in limbo during the probate process, and the odd business going bankrupt. Most people store items in units whilst in transition between homes, whether rented or owned, often unable to keep half of the contents of their previous abode. The upsurge in storage usage corresponds to an upsurge in property transactions – a city in constant change between versions of itself, requiring people to ‘store’ the remnants of previous lives in between.
Worcester has three significant legacy industries, each having declined at different times in the 20th century. The glove trade (based in the Dolday area of the city) declined significantly in the 1970s, Royal Worcester porcelain declined in the 2000s and Lea & Perrins sauce has declined significantly in the last 10 years. Each of these industries has left behind a trail of objects; tools for production, cabinets for display, samples for trade, records for administration, and the detritus of work and the working lives of employees. These objects are the historical heritage of the community and are carried by historians and archivists long after the institutions that generated them have ceased to exist.
Self storage in Worcester is at this point and serves as a geographical fact about the geography of transitions of the city and not as a facility providing storage space for a short period of time as a convenience service. There is a useful background explanation of why objects become proxies for social history.
More on Self Storage Worcester can be found at https://www.stocknlock.co.uk/locations/worcester/.
The boxes just keep on arriving. Each one is a person’s version of local history.
