THE END'S IN SIGHT?

It is almost three years since a group of us, some from the Broadstone Evening Townswomen's Guild and one from the Residents Association, sat down to discuss the re investigation and update of Broadstone's history as a Millennium project.

Before us as a guide and example was the History of Broadstone edited by Nona Bowring in the 1960s. We set about scouring documentary sources and the capacious memories of those who had lived in the area for many years and at last we have a body of evidence, which fills in gaps in the earlier history and extends our account of the village up to 2000.

What lies before us now is the challenging but exciting task of deciding how to present the material we have accumulated, how to bring to life once again the people who developed our community, the institutions, schools, businesses we have today.

It would be so easy to copy facts from the different sources but we want to make the past more accessible and to stimulate others to start searching their own backgrounds, so that in, say, ten years or so an even fuller, more pictorial and vivid story of Broadstone, its residents and their lives emerges.

It is likely that we will follow the same topic subsections as the earlier history, exploring the economic, religious, social and educational aspects of community life but whenever more information is available, a cameo of a moment in time will be included. We know, for example, from Broadstone First School logs, about the evacuees who joined the local children during the Second World War and can turn the spotlight on that episode, especially since some of those youngsters are still with us, so welcoming and friendly were the natives!

Once all the material has been written up in a first draft, it will be time to look for any glaring omissions and to plug the gaps.

We all know however that one picture is worth a thousand words. This time therefore we intend to have as many maps and photographs in the text as are relevant to the topics we describe. Already we have been fortunate in securing offers of photographs of the 20th century and would be delighted to hear from anyone with access to snaps from earlier periods - family shots are historical documents even if they reveal only the hairstyles and clothing of the time.

That leaves the thorny question of finance. How do we find the cash to have this new history published, to prevent precious details of our past being lost? It may be that we can prevail upon the two groups we represent to part with some of their funds. A more lucrative source may be the Lottery. One group in Broadstone, the U3A photography class with its project on 50 years of Broadstone shops, has pioneered this route and we hope that we can benefit from that expertise as we make our bid for funds.

And finally, the publication date of our magnum opus. We think that this may be some time during the course of 2003.

Margaret Roebuck

Archive Winter 2002 | next

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