Following on from my research on the social landscapes of industry and on High Wycombe’s furniture heritage, I was invited by the Chilterns Conservation Board (CCB)* to join their National Heritage Lottery-funded landscape partnership scheme ‘Chalk, Cherries and Chairs’. The scheme was designed to connect people to the landscape, wildlife and heritage of the central Chilterns. Buckinghamshire New University was a partner and supported me for 5 years to devise and lead a community social history project ‘Woodlanders’ Lives and Landscapes’ as part of the scheme.
For the ‘Woodlanders’ Lives and Landscapes’ project we investigated the industrial heritage of the Chilterns focussing on four of the cottage industries which sustained Chilterns people in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries – chairmaking, lacemaking, straw plaiting and beading for the fashion industry. Assisted by Research Associate Lesley Hoskins, I recruited a team of volunteer researchers and helpers, and we uncovered new knowledge about the lives of the men, women and children who depended on making things at home, and in the case of chairmaking, or furniture making as the industry grew, in workshops and factories.
Ironically, the pandemic was good for ‘Woodlanders’ Lives’. People needing things to do at home heard about the project and soon, a team of volunteers was hard at work – some researching their family histories and others investigating village workshops and factories, straw dealers, lace schools and home-based beading work. Well over 60 people volunteered for Woodlanders’, either as researchers, or participants in workshops and other events. With this new research and our networks of local historians and makers, we engaged people with this important heritage through public events, blogs, films, an exhibition and new books.
Our volunteers published 21 articles on our blog, some with ground-breaking new research and they transcribed all the census data from 1841 – 1911 for 18 villages in the central Chilterns. Other highlights were our ‘Bodgers’ Pub Tour’, led by local craftsman and historian Stuart King, who took small groups to visit pubs where the chair bodgers, or turners who worked in the woods, would go to drink, or some to work in the chairmaking workshops set up by pub landlords as a second living. We held several lacemaking and straw-plaiting workshops, supported a ‘beader in residence’ at Wycombe Museum. We curated an exhibition ‘Hidden Hands’ Women and Work in the Chilterns which ran for 10 months at Wycombe Museum in 2023 and the exhibition became a book. (See the link to the book below.)
For me personally, the greatest pleasure has been working with a team of very talented conservationists, wildlife experts, researchers and makers, meeting them monthly on Zoom or in person, and getting to know the Chilterns and the area’s history more intimately. Professionally, the project has produced significant social impact, and featured strongly in my Impact Case Study for the Universities’ Research Excellence Framework (REF) (The UK’s system for assessing the quality of research in UK higher education institutions), which achieved a 3/4 * level in the REF 2021.
*The CCB is the body responsible for overseeing the Chilterns Area of Outstanding National Beauty (AONB), now The Chilterns National Landscape (CNL).
You can read more about the project here: https://www.chilterns.org.uk/flagship-projects/chalk-cherries-chairs/.
AND WATCH THE VIDEO HERE: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=boCCWGTICq4.
You can buy a copy of our book Hidden Hands: Women’s Work in the Chilterns, HERE https://www.chilterns.org.uk/visit-chilterns/shop-chilterns/chilterns-stories/ OR HERE https://www.hawkesdesign.co.uk/shop/p/hidden-hands.
Chair bodgers’ cottages at Parslow’s Hillock near Lacey Green in Buckinghamshire. The woman fourth from the left has a pillow on her lap for making bobbin lace. Photo courtesy of Stuart King.