It certainly has been an action packed last three months since our AGM which was, once again, encouragingly well supported. One project we have concentrated more on this year is the growing demand from our members of researching their family trees. We promoted this theme at both the Cheslyn Hay and Great Wyrley Token Days and we were most encouraged and surprised at the number of people who wanted to take up this as a hobby but didn’t know how to go about it. Following this we ran a Family History Day for Beginners on Saturday, 31st May and we had a steady stream of 50 – 60 enquiries from families throughout the day, many of whom joined as new members. We will definitely add this to our Annual Programme in the future.

We also gave our support to the Local History Event at the Chase Mining Museum in May and we gave a continuous showing of ‘Walk Round the Bonk’ DVD, whilst Carol Adshead paraded in all her finery drumming all many enquiries. Like many of these events we attend, it isn’t the sales that make them worthwhile, but the contacts we make. A likely family connection that Jim Brevitt discovered was with Marion Kettle of the Landor Society from Rugeley and she owns a series of letters written by the Rev Edalji to her great grandmother, Amy Wilcox of Great Wyrley, which is probably part of Jim’s family. Out of this weekend we were also handed a batch of negatives, all concerning our local areas from a freelance newspaper photographer in the 1960s who has retired and has no further use of them.

This, together with a marvellous photograph album from the Evans/Pearce family, dating from 1928 up to the war years, has persuaded me that we have enough material for another Cheslyn Hay book in photographs. The book will be titled ‘Happy Days’ and will be launched at our Exhibition in September and even though the first draft has been completed we will still consider any photographs of interest.

We have been invited to give several talks recently including St Andrews Church Ladies Group, Landywood School, where Dorothy Shenton provided an insight of what life was like when she attended the same school (many moons ago!) and in the next few weeks I, together with the more knowledgeable Darren Butler will be giving a talk on Family History whilst Jim and Mike Belcher will be addressing the Great Wyrley Day Centre on ‘The Old Days’.

Two interesting enquiries recently have been from ITV 3 who require our help in the production of yet another hour on the Edalji trial and, more nostalgically, a local farmer has discovered an unused bag of fertiliser from Cannock Agricultural, known as the ‘Monkey Muck’ and did not want to see it go to waste. One of our members is spreading it on his allotments at this very moment.

Finally, two items of news to interest family historians. Sue Washington is transcribing the Whitehouse family history from the incredible records of the late C J Whitehouse on to a CD for our members. And Darren is creating a database for Births, Deaths and Marriages for all local names, which will include those from St James Church at Norton Canes from the 1600s.

Trevor McFarlane

 

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