There are about 1600 residents in Digswell in Hertfordshire, some of whom follow the Archive on a Facebook page.
The Archive is run by four part-time volunteers, two of whom have a number of village contacts, all of whom try to unearth photographs, historic documents and, importantly, stories from residents about their lives in Digswell in days gone by. They have no desire to be intrusive but truly appreciate learning about real life in the village in the past.
We were asked to create a website to document everything related to a local village. Information included such items as: historical documents, maps, organisations, notable buildings, notable residents, paintings, photographs, media clippings and so much more.
There are only two time-constrained volunteers sourcing items for the website so it is a long way from completion - but an archive is always a continuing work in progress. We've assisted by researching various data that is available on the Internet and we also set up a Facebook page so that more local people can be reached and encouraged to send any relevant information that they may have, including old family photographs and reminiscences of their lives in the village.
Additionally, to avoid ongoing costs of website hosting for them, we have undertaken to use a free site that is used by many other village groups in the area. It's not a patch on our usual choice of WordPress - it's more cumbersome and time-consuming with fewer facilities. For example, we wanted to include more than one photo gallery on a page but even this is not currently possible. Still, we'll work with what we have at our cut-price rate for small non-profit groups. It's an informative and interesting project.
We'll post a link to the website once it's been approved. Meanwhile, below are some of the photographs we have included in the archive.
