Category: Publications

Just enough time to put your project forward for the Alan Ball Award for Local History publishing. Once again there are categories for the best printed and the best digital publications released, this time published between July 2016 and June 2017.

The award is open to all heritage and community organisations involved with some aspect of Local History and who receive or have received public funding for the publication. This also includes lottery funding, e.g. Heritage Lottery Fund and Awards for All. In addition to local authority libraries, archives, museum and archaeology services; it includes small local museums, heritage centres and community history projects.

For the hard print prize, we would like a hard copy of any printed item you submit together with a paper entry form to: Terry Bracher (Chairman of CILIP LSG) c/o Wiltshire and Swindon History Centre, Cocklebury Road, Chippenham. SN15 3QN

For online resources, please complete this e-form, or send any CDs or DVDs together with a paper entry form to Terry Bracher (Chairman of CILIP LSG) c/o Wiltshire and Swindon History Centre, Cocklebury Road, Chippenham. SN15 3QN.

Want some inspiration for your next project- read about last year’s winners and look out for more info on the runners up from last year……..

Winner of best Local history E-Publication 2016:

Peterborough and the Great War

http://www.peterboroughww1.co.uk/ Thanks to a grant from the Heritage Lottery Fund, Peterborough Local Studies and Archives Service has produced an interactive website based on two visitors’ books from the collection. These originate from a tea room at Peterborough’s East Station set up during the Great War. The tea room was run by the ‘Women’s United Total Abstinence Council’ (WUTAC), a group of temperance ladies who wanted to provide a place of rest for servicemen travelling through the city on their way to and from the front.

These slim volumes from 1916 and 1917 provide a unique insight into the servicemen who used the tea room as they wrote poems, messages and drew sketches to express their gratitude to the ladies serving them tea and cake.

The visitors’ books have been digitised and transcribed and a team of dedicated volunteers are researching the 590 servicemen who signed the books. Each entry is updated on the website and the information is then released in real time, 100 years to the day that the serviceman signed the book, via Facebook, Twitter and on a digital screen at Peterborough Station.

The aim of the website is to enable people browse through the books, or alternatively to search for a relative. Anyone can then register an account on the site and add information to the biographies. The project has crowdsourced information, photographs and documents from across the world. The books not only provide tangible evidence of where a relative was on a particular day, they also reveal some of the thoughts and feelings of the men as they waited for their trains.

Other elements of the website include histories of Peterborough in the Great War written by local historians which includes articles on Peterborough East Station, the WUTAC ladies and Edith Cavell. There is also a digital teacher’s pack together with creative writing sessions and WW1 walking tours of the city.

 

Winner of best hardcopy publication 2016:

Ightham at the Crossroads; Ightham Parish Council, Jean Stirk and David Williams; Red court Publishing, 2015; ISBN 978-0-9930828-0-1.

This book is a detailed and fascinating history of the parish of Ightham from the formation of the local landscape and earliest human settlement to the present day. It is a fantastically well researched publication by Local Historians Jean Stirk and David Williams, funded by Ightham Parish council. Previously, no full history of this Kent parish has been written, while other article and booklets about Ightham had concentrated on archaeology, the church, manor and Ightam Mote, a medieval moated manor house, thought to be the largest of its kind in England. This current publication also covers a broad range of subjects relating to the parish’s history, notably the everyday lives of the people who inhabited the area and the things that affected them such as agriculture, work, communications, war and poverty; and much more. It includes both colour and black and white illustrations of paintings, prints, maps and photographs; and is supplemented by detailed appendices, including transcripts and indexes to original documents. It is also accompanied by a companion CD containing further transcripts of original records relating to the parish.