How to Catch a Memory

Today we had the pleasure of hosting an oral history training session. Thanks to funding from the Heritage Lottery Fund (HLF), our special guest speaker was Chris Copp, Senior Museums Officer at the Archives & Heritage department at Staffordshire County Council. We were also joined by 10 people - members of Betley Local History Society (BLHS), some of the tenants of the house, and family members including Prof Brown.

I suppose its worth me explaining exactly what oral history is. It is spoken history, often locally distinctive, people-centred and social. It is unofficial in that it is not produced by governments, or academics, nor is it content produced by an official source like a newspaper. Usefully for us, within the context of the history of Betley Court and its gardens, oral history can compensate for a lack of other evidence or complement and humanise existing knowledge.

If you visit a museum, those little information boards, with quotes from ‘ordinary people’ are created this way. Oral history can often give a human voice to dry historical facts, and it is easily relatable to a visitor’s own experience of life. It gives colour to historical information.

Chris has extensive experience of gathering oral histories, through his work with museums. This includes projects on the history of a shoe making factory, and projects about local communities, so it was interesting to hear about the evolution of the discipline within museum services and academia.

We were also introduced to a range of recording equipment, all digital gadgets these days. Oral history making really came into existence as recording equipment became available, although luckily for us, recording devices take the form of handheld voice recorders and not the reel-to-reel tapes of yesteryear!

Chris covered the subject of conducting an interview and made some clever suggestions for starting an interview and putting an interviewee at ease. Very useful! A smart suggestion he shared was to use artefacts; photographs and objects to jog memories (I once used a posy of fresh aromatic herbs with a seniors’ reminiscence group – the memories that posy conjured up were amazing!)

So, once we’ve collected lots of fascinating stories, what should we do with them? Chris gave guidance on transcribing and archiving our data. He also advised how to collect data, and gain permission for how it is to be stored and used in the future. Excitingly for us, we learned that the oral histories we collected could be archived within the Archives & Heritage collections. This means that for any future historians of Betley Court, Betley village, the oral histories we collect will be publicly accessible for their research. A fitting legacy for these memories indeed!

In the future, our plan is to use stories we uncover (with appropriate permissions granted!) to inform history boards around the garden for visitors. We would like to produce booklets about specific subjects in Betley Court’s history, like its role as Red Cross hospital during World War Two, Or as part of the history of the gardens, particularly during its abandoned years where official documentary evident is at best sketchy, but often non-existent . And I’m sure our guests from BLHS have similar projects in mind. I hope they found our session today as interesting as we did.

Best wishes

Ladybird Su

For further information about Betley Local History Society click here: blhs.co.uk