RESEARCHING your ancestors should be a lot easier in Bromyard after the local history society won a computer.

As part of the BT Community Connections Awards, Bromyard History Society was presented with a state-of-the-art computer with internet access.

Visitors to the society's new Sherford Street base will be able to use it to speed up their research.

Society chairman Alex Hoyle said: "The computer is for people who want to come in and do research, perhaps to look at ancestry sites.

"The internet holds a much broader research ability than the records we have here."

Mr Hoyle said he expected that a fee would be charged for using the service and that the machine would only be available for history-based research.

The group is one of only 1,700 community organisations around the country to have benefited from the awards.

The internet connection should be up and running in the next few weeks.