Hothfield History Society - Annual Report for April 2010 to March 2011

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Sadly we missed our opportunity to be included in the booklet of local Annual Reports and so the editor has kindly allowed me to write a brief re-port for this edition.

I apologise for a second year running that the History Society may have not be very conspicuous to you the residents of Hothfield. Nevertheless behind the scenes we have been busy...

We have sold more copies of our Hothfield in the 20th Century publication than in any other recent year, partly helped by our stall at the Fete last September, and also some copies of the extensive Russell research on CD.

Messages to the e-mail address: hothfieldmemories@hotmail.com have also continued to come in with some very interesting enquiries and requests. Many more members of the Woods and Bourne families have contacted us and we've been able to put them in contact with each other. They are spread as far as USA as well as Europe. One lady who is still here in the UK came to see the church and to look around the headstones of her distance predecessors.

Enquiries have also come in about the Workhouse (now Lakeside Village), the Manor (from a relative of a lady who was in service there), and we have been donated a booklet from 1838 describing in detail the beating of the boundaries. We are very grateful to Mr and Mrs Madden for finding us and sending the booklet free of charge for our collection. Most of the e-mail contact's have been as a result of the Hothfield Parish website, so the History Society remains grateful to the Parish Council and their webmaster, Clive Stanley, for the free use of this world-wide facility. My thanks, of course, to the Newsletter's editor Hedley for also allowing us to have an article each month. It's been the presence of the Newsletters on the website that has resulted in some of the enquiries.

We hope some of you will have seen our permanent display boards in the school which have been generously funded by the Hothfield Educational Foundation, Bluebell's Children's Centre and Godinton Trust. One more large board has just arrived and Cllr Richard King has also contributed towards a glass display cabinet. We are also grateful to the Village Hall for allowing us a temporary display on their own boards.

From later this year we hope to become more active as we are now submitting our bid for funds so that we can purchase archiving software as well as storage boxes, so that we can catalogue what we've got. Once underway the project will allow us to publish more pictures and information on the InterNet and allow everyone to see it and search on it. This will provide much easier access to Hothfield's rich heritage and allow more people to read our story. Anyone without InterNet access can still contact us but we will be able to use our own system to dig out information and documents much easier for you. We are also hoping to provide you with assistance to research your own family histories using various websites. Don't worry if you don't have a computer, as we're hoping to have a few to for you to use. Please look out in future newsletters for the Family History training and open sessions.

Chris Rogers