About The Archive
In 2018 LLHS took the lead in a new and innovative project to digitally archive all the research reports, photographs and documents in their collection. This project included four other history groups, and the Five Communities Group was born. This included Coastlands, Hook, Pembroke & Monkton and Penally History Societies. Money to support this project called ‘Sharing Local History’ was granted from the EU Leader project and the Heritage Lottery. It enabled the project to fund 2 project officers, David Llewellyn and Angela Jones, for a period of 2 years to digitally archive a considerable amount of the material in all 5 collections which will be shared digitally on the Peoples’ Collection Wales website, and the Llangwm Local History Society website. This will help students, researchers and family historians around the globe to share in these collections of fascinating local stories and heritage. This project has created great interest both locally and nationally as it was showcased at an international Digital Conference held in February 2020 at Aberystwyth University.
Blogs
Throughout the length of the project, David and Angela wrote a series of blog posts that detailed the work they were undertaking as well as the challenges of working during periods of lockdown due to the Coronavirus pandemic. Below are the blog posts they wrote, whilst working on the Llangwm archive, in the Spring of 2020.
Blog Post 1
The Five Communities History Group Project work continues apace despite the current challenging times. Currently the professional team is working together with the Llangwm Local History Society in providing detailed cataloguing and digitisation of their extensive local collection of archives telling the history of Llangwm and the community. Even a global pandemic has yet to stop the committed team or the project in its work to provide the maximum access and preservation of the community’s history, heritage and identity.
The Llangwm historical collection of material we are working on is both extensive and varied in scope and provides a fascinating insight into Llangwm as a community through the ages with a huge variety of different types of material.
Some absolute historical gems have already been catalogued and digitised included material from the village’s national award winning First World War History Project. Currently we are just embarking on work on an extensive photographic collection of life in the village in bygone times as well as other material and hope to soon have this available online.
With the amount of wonderful archival material generated by the community there is plenty to be going on with during these challenging times. Work goes on!
Blog Post 2
Well work continues apace on the Five Communities History Group Project. Myself and my colleague Angela remain working from home under the current lockdown and challenging conditions but thankfully we had the foresight to collect a large amount of archival material from the Llangwm community to catalogue and digitise prior to the restrictions and thus have plenty to be going on with.
I’ve seen one of my roles in post to advise members of the community groups and as such have been producing a series of helpful and accessible guides that groups involved in the project can use as reference material to help them manage their collections. Very pleased to have just updated an existing one and have another two now kindly checked by Angela and ready for distribution.
The plan for next week is to move on with cataloguing additional First World War related material from Llangwm focusing on individuals from the community who served and their fascinating stories. A pleasure to work on such material that the Llangwm Local History Society collected as part of a national award-winning project on the War and their community thus helping to ensure the survival of their hard work.
Blog Post 3
Welcome to the latest and third, blog post from the coal face of the Five Communities History Project. The project officers continue their hard work cataloguing and digitising the extensive archival local history collection from Llangwm.
At the moment items being worked on include the very human stories of men from Llangwm lost in the First World War. However, some of the best items of note are the amazing diaries of George Stephens of Llangwm Ferry. These have been excellently transcribed and typed up into a series of files and although one cannot linger on the detail as both they and many other items await cataloguing the value of the information contained is clear. They provide the most intriguing picture of life in Llangwm with comments on both local events and views on international event. There are detailed descriptions of events, prices, weather, people etc. We look forward to getting these digitised and available for research as the project continues apace. It poses the question – just how many more such items are hidden away in attics and trunks etc. just waiting to be discovered and the more such items this project reveals and makes accessible the more about our communities we learn.
Blog Post 4
This previous month of the project has seen us work with a double-edged approach during lockdown. We have completed extensive digitisation work of items from the Llangwm collection as well as continuing to catalogue a large amount of their extensive local history archive. We have also moved to being producing an easily accessible hard copy catalogue covering the basic information about items in the collection. It will be a large document given the amount of material the group has collected from their community and we have to work with which is excellent.
For the moment with lockdown we have no shortage of material with us to be going on with and continue to make good progress despite the challenges we all face currently. As we enter May we now enter an intense period of website and digital development work as well which is proceeding in tandem with our other work to maximise our use of resources and flexibility in these unprecedented times.
Blog Post 5
Somehow June has arrived already as time continues to fly by with the Five Communities Group History Project. We move now from Llangwm onto our next scheduled group, Penally.
Before completing this section of work with Llangwm we produced as hoped an extensive nearly 170 page hard copy catalogue with almost 25000 words and this will only grow. This details basic and clear information on the collection at a glance for everyone and including everyone perhaps more hesitant of computers thereby maximising access in Llangwm and throughout the groups in the project. It can be placed in a ring binder with all our simple archival ‘how to’ guides at the back for reference. Such a file can then be handed to each group in the project for sharing. Each group ending up with a physical library of what is available throughout the communities involved.
We had hoped to complete an audit of the collection at Llangwm ensuring everything was in the correct boxes and locations and all the boxes clearly labelled with their contents, but lockdown did get the better of us there for once. We look forward to popping back to Llangwm to cross the T’s and dot the I’s on site. We’re very pleased to say our contingency planning for lockdown appears to be working very well. In the meantime, onwards to Penally and the fabulous archival collections of their History Group members.
Who Do You Think You Are? Magazine
The project featured in the BBC magazine, Who Do You Think You Are?
Click to enlarge
