Sherington Historical Society.
A brief summary of the meeting held at No 38, Water Lane, Sherington on Wednesday 15th March 2000.
Present at the meeting were
Enid Pepper Mark Vale Mrs Elliott
Gail Waters Norman Arnold Anita Arnold
Jesse Line Sheila Line Sheila Quinn.
Apologies for absence were received from
Jackie Inskip Helen Vale.
Sylvia Gudgion, who had previously sent a letter expressing interest, has now sent a letter of apology, saying that she will be unable to commit herself as her work circumstances have changed. We have already had our first resignation.
It appears that the villagers present still wish this venture to succeed, & are showing great interest. One of the most important results of this was that it was decided that a subscription would be appropriate, for each member at £5-00 per annum, also that £1-00 per meeting would be levied. Prospective new members would be allowed to attend 3 meetings at £1-00 per meeting, before being requested to join. This means that the Sherington Historical Society is now officially in existence. The question was asked what do we need money for ? There will be stationery to start with. To provide speakers expenses. Photocopying, copying material (film), filing storage containers, if membership grows to hire premises & just for security.
The second step decided, was that a committee of three members would be sufficient for the time being. The three volunteers for these posts were Mark Vale,
(who is also looking after our money) Sheila Line & Norman Arnold.
The majority of the evening was spent discussing the photos & documents that had been brought along by some of the members. There were a number of old photos that Jesse & Sheila Line had, these included such events as the Sherington feast, school group photos & general village groups. These it was felt would be an excellent start to a collection of village events & people. This is important to do while the names of the people on the photos are remembered. Also shown were programmes from the feasts 1978 & possibly 1980.
Sheila Quinn brought along the plans for number 2 School Lane & donated a set for the start of the buildings file, also some recent village photographs.
Further to the proposed stall at the village fete, some layout proposals were submitted, by Mark & Norman, of village photos with captions. These generally met with approval, but can be improved upon. Mark & Helen also donated a number of Oldhams/Sherington lemonade bottles, to be sold at the village fete, to raise some capital for the future.
Enid donated a three drawer, lockable filing cabinet. This needs a bit of attention, but will serve as a first storage, for the items donated at this stage. It is hoped that a site for this can be found in the village hall.
Mark has undertaken the electronic filing & recording of all the material that is donated permanently & temporarily. Photos & documents. This will need a quite comprehensive filing & retrieval system, to be satisfactory. But he is confident.
Norman hopefully will be able to photographically copy the same material, for the physical filing system. For the reference part of the project.
One point that was raised was the need for the aims of this society to be written down for new members to refer to. So that prospective new members would be able to make a judgement on the suitability of the society, for them. This was agreed, also that some sort of an enrolment form would be useful. Also connected to this proposal, a constitution should be formed to give all members something to refer to. The new committee agreed that they should take care of these proposals, at their earliest convenience. Although a constitution is not a priority.
A meeting has now been arranged with Derek George for further advice on all aspects of running this type of society, for Teus 28th March. At least 2 members of the committee will attend this meeting. If any of the members have any questions that they think could be relevant for this meeting, please contact Norman, before that date. This type of society has unique characteristics that need to be addressed, as it will be dealing with irreplaceable material, so there is the insurance aspect to be considered, and of course the ever present fire & theft risk. While most of this will be covered by only having copies of original material & by keeping duplicates of all of the copies at another site.
Enid also had some material that she had collected together for the Parish Council centenary year, some of this was shown to the members. The 1891 census sheets for the whole village were of extreme interest. It was agreed that copies of the census sheets should be kept in the physical file, for reference. It was also stated that it would be of benefit to have these transcribed on to type written sheets, as some of the writing is quite difficult to read. But these would be part of the longer term projects & as they would cover 1841 to 1891 inc. involve quite a lot of work. Also Enid had extracts from the school log books, this proved of great interest & it was felt that the log books could be gone through & some extremely useful data extracted. These are the sort of projects that individual members could undertake. As they would not have any sort of deadline to work to.
Each member donated their £1-00, nine members present and Sheila Quinn gave her £5-00 membership fee. This gave her the honour of being our first fully paid up member.
Thanks were given to Enid for her hospitality, tea & coffee & who agreed to host the next meeting at 38 Water Lane, which will be on Wednesday 12th April, at the slightly later time of 8pm.
The meeting closed at 9-45 pm.