Woodlanders’ Lives and Landscapes Winter 2020 Newsletter Woodlanders in 2020 A very warm welcome to all our volunteers and supporters. We will not look back on this year with much pleasure, but many rays of light have shone out in the darkness and one of these is Woodlanders. Lesley and I have been so grateful to you all for the huge amount of support, commitment and creativity that has gone into the work you have done for the project. Our wellbeing and motivation this year has been lifted massively by your enthusiasm, by all the exchanges by email and phone and our meetings on Zoom. Thank you all. So much has happened on the Woodlanders project since the summer and we will try to be brief. Connecting Woodlanders to our audiences In September our volunteers entered the limelight to tell people all about the brilliant work they are doing. Expertly assisted by Lesley, Keith, Jane, Susan, Rosemary, Peter and Vanessa met on Bradenham Common to talk about their work, all captured on film by videographer Sean Dagnell from Bucks New University. Soon afterwards Sean and Helena worked with Rosemary and fellow lacemakers Alex and Sarah on another film in which Rosemary revealed her deep knowledge of lacemaking in Buckinghamshire. A third film, crafted by Stuart, all about tambour beading in Holmer Green added to the Woodlanders’ video collection on our web page. The volunteers’ film was also showcased at the Buckinghamshire Digital Festival and all three films presented for the Chilterns Celebration in October. This autumn and winter we posted new three new blogs on our webpage, ‘The Story of Nellie Davis’ by Vanessa, ‘The Story of Thomas Gilbert, Lace dealer of Wycombe’ by Susan and ‘The Story of the Plough Pub in Winchmore Hill’ by Jane. Two more blogs, by Graham and Simon will follow shortly. Local historians, including Jackie Kay from the High Wycombe Society and Mike Dewey, author of the popular ‘Nostalgia’ column in the Bucks Free Press are praising the quality of our volunteers’ blogs. Mike is so impressed he’s going to publish some of our blogs in his column! We’d like to say a special thanks to Rebecca for all her expert editing on our blogs. Woodlanders and partnerships We are so lucky to have been working with two local history groups, the Lacey Green and Loosely Row History Group, and the Speen History Group and we are delighted to report that we are now partnering with the Chilterns Society’s ‘Our Living Village’ project which is mapping the history of Seer Green and Jordans. Janet, a new volunteer, is working on the two projects to research lacemaking and the possible lace school in Seer Green and her work will contribute valuable outputs for both. Woodlanders and data collection In the Summer newsletter we reported on the remarkable work volunteers are doing transcribing census data from so many districts and villages in the central Chilterns. Having acknowledged the potential value of this data to other local historians, we agreed that it needed to be standardized and checked before making it more widely available. Keith, our excel spreadsheet aficionado and census expert had his arm twisted only a little bit to help Lesley with this and they have made a start. When the work is complete, we will be able to compare the data across villages in the Central Chilterns to find out how the villagers’ occupations changed over time according to the availability of employment opportunities. For example, 'As lacemaking declined, what became of the lacemakers?' We are delighted to have three more volunteers working on data collection – Andy is transcribing the census for Great Hampden and Fiona is transcribing baptismal records of Chinnor. Bernard, who has been persuaded back into work from retirement, will get back to transcribing the Chinnor census when he can. Lace making, lace schools and lace dealing The Woodlanders lace research team has grown and now comprises Rosemary, Susan, Rebecca, Pat, Sally, Claire and Janet. Susan’s blog about Wycombe Lace dealer Thomas Gilbert was published to great acclaim, and we look forward to hearing more. Pat and Sally are building on their knowledge of lace making in Stokenchurch, Claire is tracing lacemaking in the Bledlow Ridge area and Janet is looking at lace making in Seer Green, so together they are covering our area from west to east. Straw plait Following all her data collection from the census and her fascinating article about straw plaiter Nellie Davis published on our blog, Vanessa is now looking further into the lives of plaiters in Buckland and Buckland Common. We are ever grateful to our straw plait expert Veronica for making sure we don’t inadvertently perpetuate myths about the plait industry. We are lucky enough to have a new member on our plait research team, Charlotte, a volunteer at Amersham Museum, who is working with Vanessa and together they will be contributing new material not only to Woodlanders, but also to the Museum website. Beading: lace beading, tambour beading, fancy work, netting…. Beading research has developed a life of its own, with emails flying between the team daily! Superbly led by Susan, the tambour team of Rebecca, Hannah and, kindly assisted by Stuart and Veronica, is weaving together a fascinating story of the lives of beaders in Holmer Green, Hazlemere and neighboring villages. Chair making You might have thought that not much more could be discovered about chair bodging and chair making in the central Chilterns, but you’d be wrong. Graham will soon be publishing the first part of his article on his great grandfather Daniel Thorn, in which he reflects on how our identities are shaped by a greater understanding of our ancestors. Andy is waiting for the day when he can join Stuart in his extensive archive to pursue his research on the Dean family. And Simon, who only joined us in November, is already well on the way to publishing three articles about Piddington and the chair making company North’s which gave rise to the village. Rosemary, whose grandfather worked for North’s and Pat and Sally whose grandfather and great grandfather worked for the firm are helping with the research. Bodgers’ pubs Jane, Mavis, Claire, Peter and Alison, and Meriel, supported by Stuart, are making great strides in preparing this tour for its inauguration, we hope, in 2021. Andy has recently joined the team to research The Plough at Cadsden. Stuart, the tour leader is busy planning the itinerary, and the researchers are writing up their pub stories for the tour and its accompanying leaflet. Jane’s article on the Plough at Winchmore Hill has just been published on our blog. We are hoping that Rebecca will find time in her busy life to put the leaflet together for us next year. (No pressure!) Oral histories: documenting and summarizing Pete has been quietly pioneering our commitment to collect oral histories and has done a superb job interviewing a local resident Peter, who had so many valuable memories that Pete did three interviews with him! We are grateful to Pete not only for his diligent summaries of his recordings and clear filing of donated images, but also for being the keeper of the Recordings spreadsheet, so that we can know which ones have been donated to the project, and which are new. We are grateful too to Mavis who has been copying and checking the oral history recordings from her collection which she is kindly donating to the project. Helena is hoping to arrange another training in oral history collection in February, this time online, by our excellent trainer Rib Davis with a view to doing some remote interviewing. Details will be circulated in the new year. Woodlanders training In November, Katherine Gwyn from Buckinghamshire Archives gave a stimulating training session on Zoom, introducing us to the collection and giving us lots of ideas on where to look. The archives are now open on Tuesdays - Thursdays from 1 - 4 pm and places can be booked online. Woodlanders legacy As you know, at the end of the project, our research materials, articles and other outputs will be given to Buckinghamshire Archives. Planning the processes and procedures for this was getting too far down on Helena’s ‘to do’ list, when along came a new volunteer, Madalyn, who offered to liaise with the archive and put together a report for us as part of her BA in History, to enable a smooth hand over in 2024. Madalyn has already highlighted the importance of keeping accurate records and she is well on her way to completing the report which will be circulated. Thank you, Madalyn! We are looking forward to working with our volunteers on Woodlanders talks, videos, blogs and tours for the Chalk Cherries and Chairs Spring, Summer and Autumn Festivals in 2021. In the meantime, we wish you as Happy a Christmas as you can possibly have in these difficult times. Helena and Lesley .