| REMEMBERING
WIVENHOE: OUR COMMUNITY HISTORY
An Update from the Wivenhoe Oral History Project - December 2004 Thanks to the enthusiasm of our group of volunteers, the Wivenhoe oral history project has been making excellent progress. One group of volunteers has collected information on previous historical work on Wivenhoe, and worked out the pattern of shops and societies in the village since the 1930s. This group has also unearthed and summarised ten older interviews with Wivenhovians, which can be linked to our new material. We have a team of fifteen interviewers and to date they have recorded fifty interviews. We have given priority for these first months to the older generation, although we are also recording people in their middle years so as to get a better record of how life in Wivenhoe has been changing. We are also intending to cover different aspects of life: the riverside, the farms, the factories, the pubs and shops, professionals, family life, moving to Wivenhoe, and so on. For example, those already recorded include Ken Green on fishing, Ernie Vince on the big yachts, Don Smith and Frank Hodgson on the shipyards, Annie Skilton on fish processing, Marjorie Goldstraw on the clothing factory, Jack Mallett on his shop and Charles Tayler on his bakery, the artist Bill Heslop, and Olive Whaley - the novelist of the village, Elizabeth Jeffrey. In addition, thanks to some extra support given by the university we are also recording a group of early university staff. We are also experimenting with some group interviews, which will begin with memories of Valley Road wives in the 1960s. If you are interested in the project, please come to our next open meeting on Tuesday 15 February at 7.30 in the William Loveless Hall, when Don Smith will be showing old photographs and playing extracts from our interviews about Wivenhoe's past. HOW YOU CAN HELP We are particularly looking for old home videos, which we could use as part of the video to be produced for the project. We also need suggestions of people to interview who were building craftsmen, railwaymen, bus or coach drivers. Please contact us with any suggestions: Brenda Corti and Paul Thompson, 5 West Street, Wivenhoe CO7 9DE - tel 01206 824644 |
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