North Duffield Conservation and Local History Society
The archaeology section, with the considerable assistance of Jon Kenny, has submitted an application for over £25,000 of funding to the Heritage Lottery Fund –“Your Heritage”. If granted, it will allow us to conduct a three-year programme of fieldwork, field-walking, geophysical survey and targeted excavation under the North Duffield Historic Landscape Project banner.
There will be a heritage event in each of the three years. In 2011 The Big School Dig (BSD) and Big Village Dig (BVD) will excavate 1x1x1m squares in residents’ gardens and the school grounds in an attempt to identify the chronology and spatial relationship of the development of the village. Residents will be encouraged to do their own excavation under supervision. The local pub has offered its premises as the HQ and identification suite and a marquee to go on the village green for the displays of artefacts already found through field-walking and those from the BSD and BVD. Ten students from the archaeology department of York University have offered their services as volunteers and professionals and they will be on hand to identify and advise. The school children will dig their own test pits and over 20 residents have offered access to their gardens
The second year Heritage Event will be on the village green in the form of displays by re-enactment groups, local history groups, crafts and results of the Project thus far.
The third year Heritage Event will be in the form of a conference in the village hall with some professional, as well as local, speakers giving the final conclusions of the three-year Project.
We also plan to reconstruct a 5 metre scale model of an Iron Age roundhouse using as much locally sourced materials as possible. It will be built on land adjacent to a field where crop marks indicate Iron Age roundhouses were present. The children from the local school will be crucial to this project and the roundhouse will be a lasting educational medium where we intend to create crafts and tasks that would have been familiar to families over 2,000 years ago.
Finally, we have included a programme of workshops throughout each of the three years to engage and enthuse the local schoolchildren. This will include things such as, what was it like to live in the Iron Age and a vision of Roman life in North Duffield. If we are unsuccessful in our application for funding, the BVD and BSD will still go ahead.
Contact: Tony Stevens 01757 288941
Stillingfleet Chroniclers
Stillingfleet Chroniclers are jogging along slowly, with no definite aims at the moment. However, we are gathering photographs from villagers and from people who have moved away. They are mainly of relatives and old people who have now passed away. By March we had enough photos to give a PowerPoint presentation in the village hall one Saturday afternoon. To our surprise we had a hall (albeit a small hall) full of our followers from the village. After the show, those present started to tell us about people and named a few faces. It was followed by refreshments and a raffle. In the afternoon we raised £100 which was donated to the Cancer Treatment suite at York Hospital.
Contact Jocelyn on 01904 728484
Strensall Local History Group
More geophysical surveys of a Roman road first identified by aerial photography several years ago were carried out in November 2010. The results were still encouraging but further surveys in December had to be curtailed due to the extreme weather. We expect to have recommenced the surveys in April 2011 when ground conditions have improved. A working group has been established to undertake a survey of the remaining ridge & furrow features in and around the village (we await further instructions from John Oxley). Plans have been submitted for development work associated with Strensall Church and with Manor Hall farm. We hope that the group will be involved with the ensuing archaeological investigations. Our recent meetings have included a showing of old films from York Film Archive taken in and around York; a presentation by Jon Kenny about the community archaeological projects in Greater York; a talk on the Viking Age in North Yorkshire and an evening devoted to Yorkshire dialects. Future meetings will include a presentation by Kurt Hunter-Mann (YAT) on the extraordinary finds from the Gladiator Cemetery and a proposed visit to the Yorkshire Museum.
Stockton and Hopgrove Local History Group
The Group has suffered a major set-back with regards to funding of the soon-to-be-printed book.
The Heritage Lottery Fund would have funded the whole thing from initial research to publication; however we made our application at the end of the process, which was not acceptable to them. We have now received loans and some donations from generous members, the Parish Council and Strensall Ward Committee.
We are pleased to announce that the book will be launched at our second open day in Stockton on the Forest Village Hall on 9th July 2011. We welcome all Timeline members and friends to this event at which we will display our many photographs and artefacts.
Refreshments will also be available from 10:30 until 4pm.
The Sandburn Cross which has been in desperate need of repair and restoration is the subject of a grant application to the Heritage Lottery Fund; we hope that this will be more successful.
We will be applying for membership to YAYAS for the 2011/2012 period.
Due to the winter weather, field walking opportunities have been few and far between and sadly have reaped very little in terms of finds.
It is our intention to continue to research the supposition that a Roman road followed the line of the current village road and we are always on the lookout for old maps or information which may support this theory.
Contact: Joy Moseley at jmoseley@f2s.com
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