A village, a shared family history event and a lesson to all local historians

The parish hall

I think I could live in Stagsden.

It is according to its parish council “a small village west of Bedford on the way to Milton Keynes [which] is long and and straddles a low ridge between two small streams that drain into the Bedfordshire Ouse.”

And as you would expect from an old settlement it has “a 13th century church, a recently modernised pub and a beautifully restored village hall.”*

Discovering shared stories

All of which is completed with some picturesque thatched cottages, and a nearby by pass that takes the serious traffic away from the village.

It has all the characteristics of what we think makes up a typically English rural village and this includes the story of all the families who once lived there but whose descendants now live in far flung corners of England or beyond.

So it was a place calling out for a local historian to pull together the diverse histories of those people who can trace their link with the village from the 19th century  right back to the  Middle Ages and that is what my friend Jean has done.

After completing her husband's research into his family's history after his death in 2002, she then set set out not only to trace his family’s links with Stagsden but the histories of all the other families who had lived in the village at the same time as his ancestors.

Not content with that she organised an event where the descendants of all these other old Stagsden families could come together for a day to share their histories, research and treasured family photographs.

The first Reunion was in 2007 and proved such a success that another was held in the following year.

I have to say I was impressed.

It is easy to stay in the comfort zone surrounded by old documents, online resources and a laptop beavering away at unrolling the past, much more enterprising to go out and make people aware of their shared history, and bring them all together for a day.

It all took place in the parish hall which was once the village school and I can think of no  place better suited to bringing together the memories and stories of a former community.

It is easy to say in the comfort zone surrounded by old documents, online resources and a laptop beavring away at unrolling the past, much more enterprising to go out and make people aware of their shared history.

It all took place in the parish hall which was once the local school and I can think of no better venue.  As a school and how the village hall here was a place so suited to bringing together the memories and stories of a community.

Pictures; the parish hall, cottages,  and the family history event of 2007 in Stagden from the collection of Jean Gammons

*Welcome to Stagsden, http://stagsden.bedsparishes.gov.uk/