AGM and presentation ‘From our Archive’
The Society’s AGM followed the format we introduced last year. The formal business was followed by ‘Glimpses into the Archives’, a short series of presentations by the Archive team.
An exhibition of historic pictures of the Wychwoods was on display throughout the evening.
Chairman’s report
The chairman’s report, available to download, is published here:
Presentations
Members were given some insights into the work of the archive team, especially around the preservation of oral history files, and around the collection, collation and archiving of photographs.
David Betterton chose excerpts from the 1988 interview with George and Meghan Bradley. These out-takes demonstrated the human side of everday life in wartime Wychwoods, where George remembered his Home Guard friends in conversation with John Rawlins as they looked together at a picture of George’s Home Guard platoon [ details here ], and where Meghan recalls the visit of three Canadian soldiers looking for food and a wash [ details here ]. Also included were amusing anecdotes from Duncan Waugh’s 1991 talk on emigration to New Zealand, as a post-script to the archive team’s work on the Cospatrick story.
Carol Anderson chose to demonstrate the often fascinating and rewarding insights which come from the piecing together of disparate elements of the society’s archive. By way of illustration, Carol presented a series of images under the title ‘A Wartime Friendship’. These images illustrated the collected archive material on the Stoter family and in particular the relationship between Mrs Lilian Stoter and the playwright Christopher Fry and his wife Phyllis, who were wartime residents in Shipton.
Taking material (photos , letters and receipts) and adding contents from the publication ‘A Sprinkle of Nutmeg’ (wartime letters of Phyllis Fry) , Carol showed how she has unearthed more elements of a fascinating story which points us toward further research into the Stoter family.
See also:
Alan Vickers ‘ Memories of Christopher Fry in Shipton’ in the Wychwood Magazine here
