Dial H for History

Tideswell Living History Group will launch the Tideswell History Telephone on Friday 11th April. This is the first time an unused iconic red telephone kiosk still in its original location has been turned into a permanent oral history audio heritage centre. 

Residents and visitors will be able to dial-the-past to listen to Tideswell folk talking about village history using a specially adapted and free pay phone. The kiosk will also feature a gallery of archive photographs about the village. The rear of the kiosk will feature a specially written poem about using the phone to communicate in the days before mobiles and Twitter. The poem, called ‘An Ode T’ T’owd Phone Box’, was written by Dave Greenan and was the winner of a poetry competition in 2013.

The oral history recordings and photographs have been collected by members of the living history group over the last two years as part of the Tideswell Tales project. This is a community-led history project supported by the Heritage Lottery Fund and co-produed with inHeritage. We came up with the idea, liaised with Blackbox AV who supplied the unit, edited the audio and advised the group during the process of creating the 'heritage centre in a box'. The Peak District National Park Authority has paid for the cost of refurbishing and cleaning the box through the Sustainable Development Fund.

Judy Cooke, Vice Chair of Tideswell Living History Group said "Funding has helped us to preserve the distinctive telephone kiosk in its original position in Fountain Square after the Parish Council bought it from BT for £1. In the days before mobile phones and before most people had landlines, this was one of the lifelines for residents to communicate in emergencies or get in touch with friends and family. The box is in a central location and has been part of Tideswell life for generations, with many stories to tell. It has been transformed to tell many more. We hope it will help residents rediscover their past and visitors to learn about the people's history of Tideswell."

All calls are free and you can’t dial 999 for emergency services! Oral history and photographic displays will be changed regularly from the large archive collected by the group. You can also explore more of the archive by visiting http://tideswelltales.wordpress.com.

The launch takes place on Friday April 11th at 12pm. Local historian Tony Hill will unveil the box. There will be free tea, coffee and biscuits along with a display of more photos in the Vestry of Fountain Square Church.

About Tideswell Living History Group 

We are a group of people living in Tideswell and Litton, Derbyshire who wish to preserve our recent past through memories, photographs, anecdotes, news stories and other sources.

About the Heritage Lottery Fund

Using money raised through the National Lottery, the Heritage Lottery Fund (HLF) aims to make a lasting difference for heritage, people and communities across the UK and help build a resilient heritage economy. From museums, parks and historic places to archaeology, natural environment and cultural traditions, we invest in every part of our diverse heritage. HLF has supported almost 36,500 projects with more than £6bn across the UK.  www.hlf.org.uk.

Monsal Trail Walk

The Walks Around Britain video features the Peak District's Monsal Trail and the inHeritage audio player of railway memories.

Calver Weir Finale

Calver Weir Exhibition

The Calver Weir oral history project came to a glorious end this weekend with an exhibition in Calver Village Hall.

Over 200 people visited the exhibition over the weekend. The launch was attended by 10 interviewees, 2 Heritage Lottery Fund officers, all of the oral history team and about another 15 residents and visitors.

Interviewees watch the movie

The event was the culmination to 18 months hard work by the team, who had recorded 22 interviews and searched Derbyshire Record Office's collection of Calver Mill documents. Highlights include finding the sources of the 19th century mill's cotton and the range of tools required each year to keep it operating, childhood memories of playing on the weir and river, working life at Sissons stainless steel factory and the filming of Colditz by the BBC. The main success was seeing a group of people come together, learn historical skills and work as a team.

The oral history team

inHeritage has been involved with the project throughout, mentoring and guiding the volunteers and producing a travelling exhibition, booklet, movie, comic and podcasts. We have also created an archive which is deposited in Calver, Derbyshire Record Office, the Peak District National Park Authority and the East Midlands Oral History Archive.

Booklet, comic and celebratory ale 

The Movie

The exhibition

The comic

The food

Walkley Memories Day

Thank you to everyone who came to and helped make the Walkley Memories Day such a resounding success on Friday afternoon.

Walkley Community Centre was abuzz with residents and ex-residents sharing their memories, photos and documents of Walkley's rich history. Ruskin Hall looked splendid with tables, each with plates of biscuits, scattered around the room.

Over 65 people came along between 2pm and 5pm, while 21 volunteers welcomed and talked to visitors, scanned photos and documents, and helped serve tea and coffee. There was also a slideshow of old images collected by the project so far and an exhibition. Some visitors went upstairs to look at the Reform Club World War 1 memorials in the snooker room.

We found out about all aspects of Walkley's history, from World War 1 to the 1970s, and saw an original letter written home from the First World War trenches by one brother to another.

Volunteers worked tirelessly to record recollections, with two people kept very busy on the photo scanner that luckily bounces. One lucky person now has the task of putting the names and details on a list so we can begin contacting those people who have asked to be recorded.

Calver Weir Oral History

The Calver Weir oral history project is coming towards the end of the interview phase this month. Volunteers have completed over 14 interviews. Five of these are now online, which cover the early history of the mill, Sissons and the restoration of the weir. Future podcasts will include the river and Colditz.

http://www.calverweir.org.uk/page1/page1.php

Walkley History update

Great night with the Walkley historians last night. Seventeen people gathered around tables in Walkley Community Centre with maps, documents and photos to decide who is going to research what from the lives of WW1 soldiers through the early years of Walkley Reform Club to post-war life, slum clearance and the Walkley Action Group campaign.

Then, we followed the historian session with the second of two oral history training workshops at the Centre. There are now 21 trained oral historians ready to hit the streets of Walkley to discover its remembered past! Some will begin recording family, friends and neghbours. We also have about 30 people who have been in touch asking to be recorded.

Today, we spent an hour with Veronica Hardstaff in Ruskin Park, identifying which demolished streets local school children will mark out across the park for the Walkley Festival’s Ruskin Park Fun Day on the 6th July. The even numbers of Harworth Steet are definitely on to do, including the club at the corner with Daniel Hill St.

Some of the stalls will be in people’s houses, hopefully the beer tent in a back garden and the stage in the club.

We will write potted biographies of families from as many demolished homes as we can, with names and occupations, display photos and produce a discovery trail for families.

Walkley Ways, Walkley Wars Launch

 The Walkley Ways, Walkley Wars history project was launched with a bang at the Walkley Community Centre, Sheffield on Friday evening.


Almost 100 people packed out the Centre for two hours. It is great to see so much interest in Walkley’s history from such a wide range of ages and parts of the community. Bill introduced the project and two key players in the 1960s/70s slum clearance and improvements scheme gave talks - Geoff Green of the Walkley Action Campaign and Narendra Bajaria, a former planning officer with Sheffield City Council. There were exhibitions of the slum clearance plans, photographs of Walkley in the 1970s and of the memorial windows to the men of the Walkley Reform Club who died in the First World War.

There was a real buzz of excitement in the room, with almost half of the participants having lived in Walkley from before the 1960s, many either moving as their houses were demolished during slum clearance or still living in houses saved from demolition. The participants formed a cross-section of 21st century Walkley society, from teenagers to people in their 80s, and people born and bred in Walkley to more recent arrivals. Thirty-five people signed-up to take part in the research and exploration of Walkley's past over the next three years.

First World War memorial to F. Hartley of the Walkley Reform Club and Sheffield Pals.

 The project will:

1) Research the lives of Walkley people before they went to fight in World War 1 and preserve the memorials of fallen members of the Walkley Liberal Reform Club.

2) Explore the council plans to demolish Walkley in the 1960s and 70s.

3) Catalogue, research and make public the Walkley Action Group archive in the Walkley Commnunity Centre.

4) Record memories of Walkley life during the 1960s and 70s.

5) Find out what Fir St was like in 1908/09 when the Walkley Liberal Reform Club was proposed and built.

South Road, 1978

The project will train volunteers in local history and oral history who will participate in much of the exciting research.

A steering group comprising Rick Allen and Nicole Houghton (WCC), Bill Bevan, Rev Melanie FitzGerald, Veronica Hardstaff and Hugh Waterhouse will oversee the project on behalf of WCC.
We hope the project will lead to the establishment of a Walkley History Society, who will use the Community Centre as its base.

The project is funded by the Heritage Lottery Fund and is being managed by inHeritage on behalf of the Walkley Community Centre.


You can view Bill’s introduction to the project, presented to the project launch as a video on YouTube.

http://youtu.be/SUoi6t_uDZQ

Calver Weir Podcast

The first podcast from the Calver Weir oral history project is now online. It features Ray Fowler talking about his experiences, projects and successes as Sales Director at Sissons, who made stainless steel products at Calver Mill during the second half of the 20th Century. Some were shipped to the Falklands. The interview was recorded by the oral history volunteers and edited by inHeritage.

http://www.calverweir.org.uk/page1/page1.php

Tideswell Photography Workshop

Today Bill led a workshop on street photography and portraiture for Tideswell Living History Group. Members of the group learnt skills and principles to enable them to take street scenes of everyday life in Tideswell and district and portraits of oral history interviewees.

The day was divided in two - the morning on street photography and the afternoon on portraiture. Each began with a presentation on ethics, composition and lighting with examples from my own work and that of others. Participants then practised the photography skills on Tideswell's streets and with each other. Practise sessions were followed by each participant talking through three examples of their shots with feedback from others.

Example of the fantastic street photographs taken by the participants can be seen on Tideswell Tales. Everyone took great photos of Tideswell and some great portraits of each other. I look forward to seeing the further results of their work in the future.

Tideswell Tales Website

The Tideswell Tales website is launched today.

Bill led a training workshop on using the free website service wordpress.com to promote and communicate the Tideswell Tales project to members of the Tideswell Living History Group. He taught participants how to add and edit pages, blog posts, media files and photographs - including how to create image galleries. We also went through how to upload audio files to AudioBoo and SoundCloud, then how to embed the audio files into Wordpress pages. The members of the groups created news pages with embedded radio broadcasts and new themed sections with pages containing oral history recordings.

Using social media audio services saves expensive media hosting fees and embeds excellent, easy-to-use media players into project and society websites. Wordpress allows societies to create free function-rich websites containing news, events, information, photographs, documents, PDFs, and embedded audio and video, which are easy to maintain with a little training.

You can listen to the project launch radio interviews and the first oral history excerpts at Tideswell Tales. Click on News or use the drop-down menus under Audio.

Oral History Training

Tideswell Living History Group at the oral history training workshop

The oral history training workshops for both the Calver Weir and Tideswell Tales oral history projects have been a great success. inHeritage brought in Colin Hyde of the East Midlands Oral History Archive to lead both sessions. The Tideswell workshop was held in the Tideswell School of Food, made famous by the BBC's Village SOS series.

The potential interviewers of both projects gained a lot from them and reported very positive feedback. Brilliant, fantastic, excellent were all used to describe the sessions. The sessions showcased good oral history projects, then went through interview techniques, using audio recorders, ethics, consents and archiving. Each participant had the chance to interview someone else in the group.

All the participants now feel that their projects are really underway and ready to carry out their first interviews.

Colin is just one of a number of Heritage Lottery Fund and Oral History Society approved oral history trainers from around the country we can supply for groups and societies beginning their own projects.

Colin Hyde

Calver Weir Memories Day

Today was the first public event of the Calver Weir Oral History project. Bill facilitated a memories day in Calver village which brought together the volunteers and participants willing to share memories, photos or other info about Calver Mill, its Weir and the River Derwent nearby.

The village Methodist Hall resounded to stories about stainless steel kitchen sinks, boyhood games along the river and the mill's appearance in the BBC series Colditz. Colleagues who worked at W & G Sissons, occupants of the mill for much of the second half of the 20th century were reunited after many years, including the Sales Director and his secretary.

Volunteers gained their first experience of collection memories - and of scanning documents. The Chair of the Calver Weir Restoration Project was later interviewed live on BBC Radio Sheffield.

We now have almost 20 people who wish to be interviewed or have other historical information they are willing to share.

Lune Aqueduct and Lancaster Canal

We had an inception meeting today with staff from British Waterways to begin a year-long project called 'Digital Memories of the Lune Aqueduct'. This project, funded by the Heritage Lottery Fund, aims to discover, record and communicate people's experiences and stories of the aqueduct and canal. We will train volunteers to undertake oral history work, along with local history research, heritage interpretation and podcast production.

We met at British Waterways beautiful Red Bull Yard in Staffordshire - and I'm sorry I didn't take a picture of the area which also has a canal-side pub of the same name serving great food.

inHeritage won the tender because of our track record of oral history and audio trail work, including the Railway Memories from the Monsal Trail project completed last year for the Peak District National Park Authority. We were also chosen as the preferred contractor because of our experience and commitment to community training.

The project is one of two oral history projects we are managing this year. The other being about Calver Weir and Mill.

Memories of Calver Weir and Mill

inHeritage have just been contracted to help the Calver Weir Restoration Project record and preserve the memories of people associated with Calver Mill and the weir.

We will manage an oral history project on their behalf which will train a group of volunteers to record interviews with people who are linked with the mill, weir and the adjacent part of the River Derwent. The project begins with a memories day in March and runs to April 2013.

The press release for the project is below:

Search begins for memories of Calver Weir and Mill

The Calver Weir Restoration Project is launching an exciting oral history project about Calver Weir, Calver Mill and Calver Marshes. Led by volunteers from the local community, the project aims to discover and record the memories of people who worked, lived and played at the mill and adjacent River Derwent.

Calver Mill ended its working life as a cotton mill in 1923 but continued with other uses including as a World War 2 fluorspar depot and then as a stainless steel factory until the 1990s. Calver Weir was essential in managing water flow to the mill, as well as supporting a rich wildlife habitat at Calver Marshes. The weir has recently been restored with funding from the Heritage Lottery Fund, who are also funding the oral history project.

Potential interviewees include people whose parents or grandparents worked at the mill or maintained the weir; workers at the later converted mill buildings; anglers, bird watchers and local residents.

George Wolfe of the Calver Weir Restoration Project says “We are looking for people whose parents or grandparents worked at the mill or maintained the weir, workers at the later converted mill buildings, as well as anglers, bird watchers and local residents. We would like to record their memories to create a historical archive of the recent working past of the mill and the use of the River Derwent in Calver for recreation. We are also training a small number of volunteers from Calver in oral history recording.”

If you would like to find out more, the project is launched in Calver Methodist Church with a Memories day on Tuesday the 27^th March. All are welcome who have memories of Calver Mill, Weir and Marshes. The day runs from 2pm to 5pm and includes refreshments. Volunteers will be on hand to write down any memories you may have and take your details if you would like to be interviewed at a later date.

If you would like to find out more or enquire about being involved please get in touch with Bill Bevan, 0114 2345411, bill@inheritage.co.uk or George Wolfe, 01433 631308, geowolfe1@gmail.com.

ENDS

Notes to editors

About the Calver Weir Restoration Project

We are a registered charity formed in 2004 with the objective of saving the weir from collapse and restoring it to good condition. Calver Weir is a Listed Grade 2 structure, built in the 19th century to provide water to power cotton spinning at Calver Mill, on the River Derwent, in the Peak District National Park, Derbyshire.

Now that the restoration of the weir has been achieved, CWRP is working hard to add to the enjoyment of visitors to the area, by improving footpaths and access points, and carrying out important conservation work and providing information on the history and wildlife.

Hunter Archaeological Society Centenary

inHeritage will be working with the Hunter Archaeological Society to celebrate their centenary in 2012.

The Society has a rich history of researching and conserving the archaeology and historic buildings of South Yorkshire and North Derbyshire. Over the Society's 100 years they have taken part in notable projects, including the 1930s watching brief on Sheffield Castle, and the 1970s excavations of Swine Sty prehistoric settlement in the Peak District.

During 2012, inHeritage will help project manage a range of activities designed to celebrate the Society and the importance of community archaeology. We will lead workshops on interpretive writing and exhibition production, as well as assist society members write and edit a booklet and exhibition. We will produce a free-to-use Google Sites website for the Society, the first dedicated website the Society will have, and train members in its maintenance. The new web address for the Society is - www.hunterarchaeologicalsociety.org.uk

The press release for the project is below:

Hunter Archaeological Society wins Heritage Lottery Fund support

The Hunter Archaeological Society has received £36,500 from the Heritage Lottery Fund (HLF) for an exciting project in South Yorkshire and North Derbyshire: Lives in the past, discoverers for the future. Led by volunteers from the local community, the project will celebrate 100 years of community involvement in historic and archaeological research and conservation.

The project will inspire and train a new generation of ‘heritage explorers’ to continue this long tradition of amateur involvement in archaeology. The project will form part of the centenary celebrations of the Hunter Archaeological Society, a charitable society set up in 1912 to study and report on the archaeology, history and architecture of South Yorkshire and North Derbyshire. The Society is named after Joseph Hunter, one of the first people to research and record the region’s history. Joseph was born to a cutler in Sheffield in 1783.

Ruth Morgan, Honorary Secretary of the Hunter Archaeological Society says “We’re very grateful to the Heritage Lottery Fund who have awarded the Society a grant to celebrate the contributions that individuals and communities have made to the discovery of the heritage of our region. We are looking forward to telling more people about the Society during this important year in our own history.”

The Society is organising a series of events during the year with the assistance of the University of Sheffield, Sheffield Local Studies Library and Museums Sheffield. These include a Centenary Weekend, 11^th - 13^th May, with a conference on community archaeology, a reception at Sheffield Town Hall and dinner at the Cutlers’ Hall. The weekend launches a series of guided walks and excursions throughout the summer -these will be available later as self-guided trails, and there will be a special edition of the Society’s Transactions.

Weston Park Museum will host an exhibition on the work of the Society from February. Members are researching the life stories of past members and these will feature in an exhibition in Sheffield University Library in the autumn and a specially produced booklet.

Primary schools in Barnsley, Sheffield and Dronfield will take part in a project which includes digging test pits to get hands-on experience of archaeology.

You can find out more about the events and the Society at www.hunterarchaeologicalsociety.org.uk

Fiona Spiers, Head of HLF, Yorkshire and the Humber said “This is a fantastic project which will allow the community to learn about the Hunter Archaeological Society and the contribution it has made to their local heritage. Through aprogramme of hands-on events and activities focusing on archaeology and community history, people of all ages will have the opportunity to learn new skills and get involved in the heritage that matters to them.”

ENDS

Worcester Archives Source Project

We are delighted to be working with Worcester Record Office on a major project to create an exhibition for the opening of The Hive, a new landmark multi-use building in the centre of the city. 

We have been contracted to produce the exhibition including display panels, audio-visual presentations, a children's time detective's trail and a rogue's gallery. Material for primary school children is central to the exhibition so we will be working once again with Marvin Harding, artist for the inHeritage comics. The exhibiton will tell the story of The Butts, as known through documents and archaeological excavations in advance of building The Hive. It is both a celebration of the work of WASP and the opening of the building which brings together record office, archaeology services, public library and university library in one distinctive building.

Details of WASP can be found on the project website -http://www.worcestershire.gov.uk/cms/records/projects/wasp.aspx. The exhibition is scheduled to open with the building in summer 2012.