The possibility of creating a Village Tributes Book has been raised, and the thoughts of Villagers past and present would be welcomed regarding what might be considered.
We already have a fair collection of tributes going back around 40 years by virtue of the village newsletter / magazine archive. These could be converted to a consistent format and brought together.
In addition there are many tribute articles going back around 150 years as a result of various local people providing inputs to the local press in the form of obituaries or general tributes. These have been captured and stored and could similarly be converted to a consistent format and brought together.
These two sets of information might form the basis of the Tributes Book.
The next step is to get feedback on the idea, and any thoughts on whether any additional inputs might be sought to add to this draft Tributes Book.
To help generate this feedback, a “first draft” of a Tributes Book / Compilation will be gathered together so it can be shown to people – with a target date of the Flower Festival over the weekend of 28th and 29th June 2025.
This first draft will show “what we have to date”, both in terms of Village Newsletter Tributes and Local Press Reports, along with examples of how the reformatting of that information can create a publication worthy of recording those memories.
With this “baseline” document, it will help discussions whether enhancements such as adding missing tributes, augmenting existing tributes with additional words or images.
In all cases the views and inputs will be based on the wishes of the relatives of the people concerned.
There are currently almost 200 tributes in the Parish / Village Newsletters from 1978 to date. There are also over 100 press reports from the earlier period.
The aim is that the Tributes Book will not be published for general public view “on-line”, but will be made available to those interested in reading it. This avoids the information being indexed by search engines, in the same way as the Village Newsletters are held.
Next Steps
Any thoughts on this idea will be welcomed – feedback can be sent to Antony Farmer or via the “contact us” section of this website.
Those who are attending the Flower Festival will be able to view the first draft and provide initial feedback, and others who are interested but who cannot attend that event, will be updated at that time.
Once any feedback has been gathered a further plan will be published.