Help Record Poles' Contribution to Norfolk

We have been contacted by Adian O'Dell from the newly-formed Norfolk Polish Heritage Group who are keen to get in touch with people within Norfolk with a Polish heritage. Here's what Adrian says:

'We would be very grateful if you would forward the attached EDP/EEN article about the newly-formed Norfolk Polish Heritage Group to your members. The HPHG has the support of Norfolk Record Office.

We are keen to contact individuals living in Norfolk who have family connections with Poland or an affinity with that country to help us explore and record stories behind the important contribution that Poles have made to this county since World War II or earlier.

Thank you in advance for your co-operation and we look forward to hearing from some of your members or people they might know in the near future.

Kind regards,


Adrian O'dell (born Zolkowski)
on behalf of NPHG'

If you wish to make contact please email me at howeychoosetouseit@gmail.com and I will forward your message to Adrian. 

Best Wishes,

Colin

Conservation Matters at the Norfolk Record Office

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Norfolk Record Office - Latest

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Local History/Heritage Talks, Walks & 'Experiences' - June & July

Explore, be curious...

A great series of history/heritage related events shared by Liz Budd from the Norfolk Record Office...

'We have some great new events to tell you about today as we look across the rest of June and into July.

‘Norfolk’s War’ Community Conference at the Forum, Norwich

On Friday, 20^th June, the Forum is hosting a conference aimed at individuals and groups with in interest in the First World War. The programme includes speakers from the Commonwealth War Graves Commission, the UK Government, Heritage Lottery Fund, Norfolk Record Office, Norfolk Library and Information Service and Norfolk Regimental Museum as well as local heritage groups and historians.

The event is free and includes a light lunch. It starts at 9.30am and finishes at 3.30pm. Please email rachel.harrison@theforumnorwich.co.uk or telephone 01603 727966 if you are interested in attending. The Forum Trust are organising this event on behalf of Norfolk County Council and Keith Simpson, MP.

A Walk with Frank Meeres

To mark Refugee Week, Frank Meeres will be leading a walk around Norwich on June 22^nd at 2pm. The walk starts from the Forum and will look at the lasting impact of refugees in the city over hundreds of years. More details here.

House and Military History Workshops

From June 14^th to June 20^th we are running twelve free workshops about house or military history in twelve Norfolk libraries including Gorleston, Mundesley, Hellesdon, Thetford (x2), Taverham, Harleston, King’s Lynn, Hunstanton, Downham Market, Costessey and Attleborough. More details here.

UEA meets NRO

Starting this evening, we have three lectures from UEA researchers on subjects as diverse as Latino identities, politics, conflict and communications. All start at 6pm on weekday evenings in June at the Millennium Library. More details here.

Heritage Hour

New topics for our September Quarter include a talk from the curator of Norwich Castle’s Wonder of Birds exhibition, smallpox and vaccination in Norwich, resources of the Regimental Museum and the 2^nd Air Division State Registers. Heritage Hour happens every Wednesday at 12.30pm and every Tuesday at 5.30pm at Norfolk Heritage Centre, on the second floor of the Millennium Library. Full details will appear on our events page shortly, or pick up a leaflet at any of our locations.

If you have queries about any of the above events, or other questions about using Norfolk Record Office, please email norfrec@norfolk.gov.uk.

We hope to see you soon!

Norfolk Record Office'

Norfolk Record Office Events

Here's a message from Elizabeth Budd from the Norfolk Record Office's Education and Outreach team...

"Norfolk Record Office is very pleased to announce new events this June, and to report that there are still a small number of places on our children’s half term activities next week.

For Adult Learners’ Week (14-21 June) we are running eleven workshops in libraries across the breadth of the county. Some will be ‘house history for beginners’ and others ‘researching your military ancestors’. For full details, click here.

Would you like to hear about current research at the University of East Anglia? If communications, politics and conflict or American culture are your cup of tea, then ‘save the date’ for our three special guest lectures from the Schools of History and American Studies at UEA. We are delighted to have agreed dates and speakers for a trio of evening events (6pm) at Norfolk Heritage Centre called ‘UEA meets NRO’.

Our half term activities on May 27 and 28 at 2pm are booking fast. To ensure your place(s), please call 01603 222599. This time, we’re making boats and windpumps, celebrating St Benet’s and the Norfolk Broads. Our children’s activities are free!

If you’d like to interact with us online rather than visiting us, why not suggest ‘Your Norfolk Icon’ on our Facebook page? As our current exhibition is about St Benet’s Abbey an ‘icon of the Broads’, we’re looking for your own personal favourite Norfolk places.

Finally, a reminder that our St Benet’s lectures and Heritage Hours are ongoing, and again all of these details can be found at http://norfolkrecordoffice.eventbrite.co.uk

Happy researching!'

St Benet's Exhibition & Free Lecture Series

Stories from St Benet's Exhibition...

St Benet’s Abbey, often referred to as an ‘icon of the Broads’, has been the subject of a recent HLF funded Conservation, Access and Community Project.  This exhibition examines the history and development of the Abbey, through the stories and records of its inhabitants and visitors, including those involved in the project.

The exhibition features items from the Norfolk Record Office, as well as artwork and archaeological finds from the Norwich Castle Museum and Art Gallery and books and photographs from Norfolk Millennium Library (click on image, below, for details).

Stories from St Benet's Lecture Series...

In addition to the exhibition, there is also, an accompanying free lecture series, May – June 2014 (click on image, below, for details)

Norfolk Record Office Events

Norfolk Record Office has recently confirmed two new series of events, one at Norfolk Record Office: The Archive Centre (on Martineau Lane) and the other at Norfolk Record Office: Norfolk Heritage Centre (inside the Norfolk and Norwich Millennium Library).

Lunch-time talks

At Norfolk Record Office: The Archive Centre, we present four fascinating lunch-time lectures in partnership with the UEA School of Literature, Drama and Creative Writing. The talks encompass the requisition of five Norfolk villages in 1942, autobiographer Margery Kempe, using archives to ‘create fiction from fact’ and looking at how our 17^th century counterparts understood heritage.

More details here:

Lunch-time Lecture April and May

Behind-the-scenes tour

There will also be the opportunity to see behind-the-scenes on a very special tour opportunity in association with Norfolk’s Great Big Read. Find out more about us, experience the conditions in our strongrooms, find out how our conservators care for our books, and see some original manuscripts first-hand. Book online at Eventbrite: Behind-The-Scenes tour or call 01603 222599.

Heritage Hours

At Norfolk Record Office: Norfolk Heritage Centre, we can now reveal the April to June Heritage Hour programme which includes research clinics as well as talks on various topics, from workhouses to Robert Toppes, medieval mercer of Dragon Hall.

Further details here:

Heritage Hours April to June

All of these events are free, and no booking is necessary except for the tour.

Open Evening

Finally, we are pleased to announce that we will be hosting an Open Evening from 4-5:30pm on Thursday, 3 April – all are welcome for a look around and to ask questions about who we are, what we do, and how we can help you. Tea, coffee and biscuits will be provided!

* Our thanks go to Elizabeth Budd, acting Archive & Education Outreach Officer, for providing us with this information. 

Free Paston Lunchtime Lectures

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The Paston letters, written by members of a wealthy Norfolk family, offer a picture of life between 1422 and 1509. This unique archive is the oldest surviving private correspondence in England. As part of the Paston exhibition currently running at the Norfolk Record Office, there will be a series of free lunchtime lectures (click on flyer, above, for details). 

Christmas Tales and Historians Questions - Tuesday 8th January

We always meet at 10:30 in the Marzanos cafe, located in the Norwich Forum. Tables are reserved for our us to the right of the serving area. After half-an-hour socialising and talking history around our tables we, either, go to the 'Training Room' on the top floor of the library, or we go out and explore the city's many historic treasures. 

Christmas Tales...
For our final session before our Christmas break (we'll resume on Tuesday 8th January), Dave Tong (historian and professional storyteller) returns to regale our members with his fantastic Christmas tales. As ever, I'm sure he will be engaging, entertaining and informative. 

Historians Questions...
However, before we get to that, next Tuesday's session will see a change of approach from our recent talk orientated ones. Archive specialist, Liz Budd, is going to join us to answer our questions about how we would go about researching people, places, industries etc. What are the sources, and how can you access them? That kind of thing. This more interactive and informal session will also allow us to find out about each others interests, and we will be doing more of this format into the future...

Doing Different...
... Talking of which: yesterday, I had a conversation with BBC Producer, Gary Standley, about the possibility of club members getting involved with making some films about local historical places that mean something to them. We're resolved to make this happen, so, with that in mind, Gary will be coming to talk to us about this in the New Year. This is a great example of the way that we, in the Norwich Community History Club, "do different". 

Easy to reach history...
There is another point I'd like to make, and which I will repeat from time to time: our club is about making people feel comfortable and welcome (that's one of the reasons we always start by meeting in the Marzanos cafe). Part of this, is about facilitating access. Access doesn't just happen, there has to be an active will to make it work. For this reason, if anyone who attends doesn't understand something we've discussed, or wants to make a point, but is too intimidated by 'the crowd' to do so, please do feel able to come and talk to me. It might also be that you there are other barriers you are experiencing. If so, please discuss this with me. I will make myself available after our gathering for this purpose. We come in all 'shapes and sizes', and I aspire for our club to reflect that. (Oh, and by the way, I would once have been completely intimidated myself about joining a "HISTORY CLUB", assuming, as I would have, that they would be too posh and think themselves too clever for the likes of me - I had an inferiority complex masked by an aggressive mask back then!)

Also, we tend to think about access as purely about overcoming barriers, however, it is a far more positive process than that. For instance, not only do people with different experiences and backgrounds often ask different questions, they often ask seemingly simple questions that folk who are more formally 'schooled'/immersed don't think to ask. For instance, my friend, Jacques Kalume (a Congolese refugee - and an erudite and highly intelligent man), has stumped me on a number of occasions, such as when he asked me why the Duke of Edinburgh is not called a king (can anyone help us with that one?). In a wider sense, he also made a group, where I was tutor,really think about the value of our local historic heritage, when - amazed at the age of Norwich Cathedral - he explained that it was a wonder to him and his community that such a building could survive so long, as in the Democratic Republic of Congo a terrible civil war means that - to use Jacques' words at the time - "everything is smashed." In this context, the survival of archives, buildings etc should be savoured, celebrated and appreciated much more than we tend to do. 

Another example of this, is the way that people with dyslexia - perhaps because of the 'dyslexic gift' around their visual pattern recognition - seem to be really good at identifying, often seemingly incoherent, medieval graffiti. Indeed, his (then undiagnosed) dyslexia enabled Dave Tong to be excellent at reading old historic records when he was studying for his BA and MA in history at UEA...

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An example of pre-modern handwriting from early
1600s, transcribed from the Norwich Mayor's Court Records:
"... Margaret Caly on Witson Tuesday [...] often tymes clapped her hand on
her backside and badd him [an official called, Christopher Gyles] kiss there"

I think you get my point - diversity is not just a positive exchange in itself, in our context, it also improves our thinking as historians. 

Finally...
On some other projects I'm involved with, other members like to get involved by, for instance, contributing to the project's blog. If you wish to write something to go on here, or post a photo perhaps - whatever - please let me know (I can make you a contributor, so you can post on here, just as I am doing now). You don't even have to be online to do so. I'm happy to transcribe what you've written, or scan images, on your behalf. Over time, I'm sure we'll develop a Social Media team of volunteers to make this more participatory and multi-voiced platform.  

See you next Tuesday!

~ Colin ~