Shiptonthorpe Heritage Project

A new village project in Shiptonthorpe is preserving the past while at the same time, bringing people together in the present – we find out more…

It started with a suitcase full of memories.
“One lady in the village had been collecting memorabilia for years,” explains Diane Heaven from the Shiptonthorpe Heritage Project “and keeping it all in a suitcase – things such as newspaper clippings and photographs. There were other people too that we knew about, with stories relating to the village’s past and one day, as a group of us were chatting, we said, wouldn’t it be lovely to preserve all these things and to have some understanding of what’s gone before in the village.”
The Project was officially launched in September 2014, with an open day at the village hall to gauge local interest. “A lot had been going on behind the scenes before then,” says Diane, “but we knew we couldn’t do it without the community. There was a presentation from Ruth Postill and Jean Bean, two sisters whose ancestry in the village goes back at least nine generations to the 1600s. There was a lot of interest.”

“It’s about the ‘then,’ but it’s also about the ‘now,’”

Essentially for the project, which aims to create a digital archive and also a book, people began to bring along their own memorabilia to be scanned and preserved. “We’re opening the Village Hall on certain days for people to come along and bring us anything they think might be of interest, from house deeds and birth certificates to family photographs. Some of these things have obviously been in families for years, so we scan and return them on the same day. A further stage will be to go onto collecting oral history and making recordings of people talking about the village’s past.”
The project however, does not focus solely on the past. “It’s about the ‘then,’ but it’s also about the ‘now,’” says Diane. At the November fundraising event, “Wartime in Shiptonthorpe,” the community came together in a special celebratory evening. “The theme was chosen as it was the WW1 centenary, and the Village Hall was set out with long tables and bunting like a street party. The local garden centre Langlands served wartime fare – stew and dumplings, followed by apple crumble and custard, and there were readings around the theme of wartime by both children and adults. It was a really good evening. The Weighton Waits, a local choir, entertained us with singing, including some wartime songs, and there was a Spike Milligan sketch about his time during the war. Although we are a village that does a lot together – we have a pantomime, a Morris side and a thriving village hall – this event reached wider, and there were people there I haven’t seen before. It was a successful fundraiser too – a total of £615 was raised. We’re planning to do similar themed events in the future – a Victorian and Edwardian music hall is in the pipeline.”
The funds raised will go towards IT equipment, so the creation of the digital archive can begin, something that will be of interest not just people living in Shiptonthorpe today, but for generations to come.
“We’ve lived in Shiptonthorpe for seven years now,” says Diane “and although new people are always moving in, we also have a strong sense of identity. Knowing about the past contributes to a sense of belonging in a community and that too is what this project’s about.”

If you have Shiptonthorpe memorabilia or memories of the past you think might be of interest to the Shiptonthorpe Heritage Project contact Sue Beadle on 07766 554574.