FLHIG

Family and Local History
Indexing Group

Selected articles from the Newsletter

This article first appeared in SIGGNL 11   (February 1996)

Essex Local History Recorders Scheme
by Jean Aberdour, Honorary Co-ordinator

Introduction

The first local history Recorder Scheme was initiated and run by Suffolk Local History Council. This is not a County Council organisation, although it does receive some help from it, but is run voluntarily by a group of local historians to encourage and assist Suffolk local history. It supports and advises its members, local history groups and societies, publishing the Suffolk Review and generally arranging meetings, courses and competitions on local history. It realised in the 1950s during a major re-building in Ipswich how much was changing, so that the very recent past was in danger of soon being forgotten. The Recorder scheme was organised by the Council with a network of people across the County to ensure the survival of valuable historical material, mainly by seeing the present is adequately recorded at local level and being alert to record items of historical interest which might be overlooked or lost for ever. Later, Hertfordshire Local History Council adopted a similar scheme, and in 1981, Mr. Donald Jarvis, a well-respected Essex historian, organised a recorder scheme in Essex. In 1994, because of age and failing sight, he felt unable to continue and handed its co-ordination to me.

Scope

The names of the Recorders had not been up-dated effectively since 1986, so my first task has been to see that we have an active group of recorders and to be sure that they are aware of their terms of reference. I did this through the auspices of Parish Councils, so that the Recorder would clearly have the support of their local community. This, of course, limited the area covered by the scheme to the administrative county of Essex and for the present does not include what was historically metropolitan Essex. I have recently begun to circulate Town Councils to extend the network into urban areas and there are another ten new recently-created Parish Councils to add to the list.

Participants

Some parish councils have appointed a single recorder who works on their own. Others have divided the area of their influence into areas, each with a separate recorder. Another alternative has been for an established historical society to take on being recorders of a parish as a group, and, very encouragingly, new historical societies have been formed because of the interest in local history the Recorder scheme has generated. On the down side, some parishes have not replied to my letter, and others have not been able to find anyone willing to take on the job. However, we now have over two hundred active recorders in the County of Essex.

What is a Recorder? First of all, we are all volunteers, and how we work is to a considerable extent our choice, as is how much we do. One need not primarily be an historian, but most usually are, often already working on local or family history. Newcomers to a community do sometimes take on this role, but it is essential that any recorder is interested in the community they serve and known to it. Often they already have or have had another role in the community, and we have churchwardens, parish clerks and councillors, local newspaper correspondents, schoolteachers, as well as other past or present occupations, which all bring a wealth of experience, interest and contacts into their work as a recorder. All recorders are supplied initially with an information pack which gives suggestions on ways of working, such as keeping a village diary. There is a list of guidelines on a variety of relevant subjects, together with names and addresses of the County and local professional bodies to whom they can turn for advice. It is emphasised how important it is to consult professionals when any doubt or problem arises and we are lucky in having such support as well as that of local museum and library staff.

Tasks

It is hoped that each Recorder will send a brief annual report to me, which the Essex Record Office will store as a yearly record of our work. The Department of Local History at the University of Essex is very interested in our scheme and we hope to work with them on an individual basis in a County-wide oral history project. Some recorders have already undertaken work in this field as well as making photographic records of buildings and landscapes which have now radically altered.

Training

This Autumn [1995], we are beginning local District meetings to enable recorders new to the scheme to learn from those more experienced, and also for all recorders to exchange information which might be useful in the future. Speakers in specialist fields have offered to lecture on specific subjects and thus help to improve the standards of recording. We should like, as in Suffolk, to hold a yearly seminar but this has yet to be organised and to be possible financially.

Storage and accessibility

One of the problems raised in particular by the Chief Archivist has been the storage of fragile material in unsuitable conditions within the community it concerns and without the knowledge of anyone outside it, as is other material of interest to the professional historian. Obviously this needs serious consideration and discussion with all concerned, because local pride and accessibility are very real issues in most cases here. Possibly the easier part of this difficulty to solve is to list what a Recorder holds in their local community collection and it is here that computerisation could possibly play a part. Word-processing on an individual basis is not uncommon but an overall scheme of cataloguing would need serious discussion with the professional bodies concerned and with the Essex recorders. I have enquired from the local secretary of the Suffolk Recorders if they are using computers and they have not considered this idea so far. The first practical consideration from my point of view would be the limit it would put on the choice of recorders if they all had to own one, but obviously this would hardly be necessary.

I am sure you are all aware of the work of Kevin Schurer, Senior Research Associate, Cambridge Group for the History of Population and Social Structure and Assistant Director ESRC Data Archive. He makes the point in his contribution on sources and methods in the Open University course [DA301] on studying family and community history that although the new user-friendly computers have proved effective in many cases, it is not necessarily so in every area of an historian's work. Any consideration on our part lies in the future, but for the present, we have achieved our first objective which was an active and viable group of local history recorders in the county of Essex.

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