History Group Diary Project

Our ancestors wrote letters - sometimes several times a day - but most of us pick up the phone, or use e-mail rather than snail mail to communicate. They kept diaries - but how many people now have time to keep a blow by blow account of their everyday doings?

The History Group archive has files on big events in the village, such as the Millennium and Jubilee celebrations, but we also need to remember the smaller things. A few years ago, everyone was asked to send in photographs of themselves and their families, to provide a record of who lived where, and what they looked like. The idea of the diary project was to build on that. We asked people to keep a diary just one day a month for a year, starting in April and finishing in March 2006. A wide range of villagers took part in the project, including the top two classes at Brightwell School.

Diaries that were submitted in electronic format have been printed out on acid-free paper to aid preservation; text and pictures have also been backed up on CD where possible. We asked people to include photographs of themselves and their house interiors, and were delighted when they provided this and a lot more besides.

Individual diaries will not be made public; these are messages for the future, not for now. The diaries are now stored in the History Group archive, and are closed for a minimum of 30 years.

Some of the best examples of what can be achieved by keeping records of everyday life come from diaries kept for Mass Observation. This was a project set up in the 1930s - and still flourishing - with the idea of providing an ‘anthropology of ourselves’. During World War Two some 300 observers kept diary entries, providing much information that would otherwise have been lost to history. In fact, it was reading an anthology of accounts by nurses, factory workers, garage assistants and WAAF ladies that gave me the idea for this project. The book I was reading is called Wartime Women: A Mass Observation Anthology 1937-45. Ed. Dorothy Sheridan, and there are many other anthologies produced by the organisation.

Sally Dugan