Volunteering - history and heritage

Find new ways to enjoy and protect Dorset's beautiful landscape and heritage by volunteering.

Volunteers work regularly with Dorset Council's historic environment team. Some do it just for fun while others are looking for work experience or for a change of career. Find out more about working with the team, and tell us about what kind of work you would like to do by completing our volunteer enquiry form. 

These are the type of volunteer opportunities we offer:

Historic Environment Record

Help enhance the Historic Environment Record (HER) database and learn to use digital mapping. HER enhancement projects include inputting information from commercial archaeological reports and other publications, plotting of features from historic maps and aerial photographs. This involves:

• research and organisation of information, reading and understanding archaeological reports
• data entry into the HBSMR database
• digital mapping using Geographic Information Systems (GIS)

Finds photography and recording

Support the Finds Liaison Officer (Portable Antiquities Scheme) by assisting with photography and recording of archaeological objects. This involves:

• weighing and measuring objects, and photographing them using a digital camera
• manipulating digital images, and uploading them to an online database
• creating your own online records of objects

Outdoor survey and recording

Occasional opportunities for recording the condition of monuments and historic buildings in the field. This sometimes involves photography and usually requires the completion of paper or online forms. 

Training in using equipment, software and online databases will be given. Not everybody does everything - some volunteers choose to focus on one particular activity or area of research. 

These roles are suitable for long-term volunteering as a block of consecutive days or as individual days or half-days over several weeks or months. 

As well as general volunteering opportunities, you might be interested in:

• helping at the Roman Town House
• being a local Heritage Champion
• coming along to the Dorset Historic Environment Record forum

Historic Environment Liaison Officer (HELO)

If you are a parish or town clerk and want to tell us about your Historic Environment Liaison Officer, you will find our Historic Environment Liaison Officer (HELO) scheme form more suitable.

Historic Environment Record Forum

Help to shape the development of the Dorset Historic Environment Record (HER). Come along to our next HER Forum meeting and give us your views.