The Bradwell Silver Band is based in New Bradwell, Milton Keynes. It was founded in Jan 1901 as the Bradwell United Brass Band and adopted its current name in the early 1950s.
The archive collection contains material relating to the establishment of the band right through to the present [2024], so covers the whole of the 20th century and the first quarter of the 21st. It is a “live” record in that the band still exists and the archive is still being added to.
As such it provides a valuable record of the band’s evolution, its activities and its place in the local community. Resources being developed include a small mobile exhibition, a complete register of players, and articles for the band’s monthly newsletter.
It includes minutes of meetings, accounts, programmes, posters, reports on events, personal memories of band members, membership cards and photographs and other memorabilia. There are also some recordings of the band [a 78rpm record, cassette tapes and CDs] all of which have been digitised. A lot of the more recent material exists as digital files only.