Passionate about local history

Eltham in 1909

Now I collect local history groups, in fact I hoover them up, avidly signing up to their newsletters mentioning them on the blog and where practical going to the meetings.

And it is because I just don’t think you can get enough local history.

After all when it comes down to it for most of us where we live is important and making sense of what happened  in the past helps understand how the place has developed.

Of course there are  the sniffy historians who mumble on about parish pump events and the need to see the bigger picture, but the bigger picture always ends at the bottom of your road, whether it’s the closure of the local factory during a depression, or the very real and personal conflict of conscience when them at the top decide that it would be better if we followed a Protestant Prayer Book and attended a church devoid of holy pictures.

And it is the local and the family historians who often unearth the evidence that either confirms or rubbishes the great sweep of history theory.

North Cray, © J.D.Gammon

So all of this is to introduce two new ones, the Eltham Society and the North Cray Residents Association.*

Now I rather suspect the secretaries of both will rightly say “we have got on very well for the last x number of years without this Northern chap writing about us,” which is perfectly true but won’t stop me.

The Eltham Society was founded in1965 which was the year after we washed up in the place, although I have to confess with a hint of embarrassment that I only joined this year.  But in my defence I was 14 in 1964, left Eltham for Manchester five years later and only felt that I could start writing about its history recently.

North Cray beat it by 21 years having been set up in the March of 1944 which strikes me as a bit odd given the titanic sweep of history that was going on at the time.  But then the very idea that people could be thinking about the future at such a time appeals to the optimist in me.

The Tudor Barn, Well Hall © Scott MacDonald

And takes me back to that simple idea that if you like somewhere you will want to keep it nice, watch carefully the developments a foot and judge those changes by what has gone on before which fits with Eltham’s  “Preserving the Past, Conserving the Present, Protecting the Future.”

Often the history side grows out of what was a residents association or in our case a Civic Society.

All too often I chose to dismiss them, falling back on the ignorant prejudice that here were a group of penny pinching hard faced zealots unwilling to spend for the common good or wrapped up in arcane practises.

Nor is this so far from the mark in the late 19th century.  Our own Chorlton Residents Association was quick to scrutinise the profligate actions of local government, but then they also campaigned for the provision of better education, sanitation, public libraries and street lighting, all of which I approve of.**

So yet again history is messy, which just leaves me to suggest you explore the history sections of their web sites.

* The Eltham Society http://www.theelthamsociety.org.uk/ and the  North Cray Residents Association http://www.northcrayresidents.org.uk/

** “exercising a rigorous protest against extravagance” ......... The Chorlton Ratepayers Association 1877-?
http://chorltonhistory.blogspot.co.uk/2013/04/exercising-rigorous-protest-against_12.html

Picture; The Kings Arms from The story of Royal Eltham, R.R.C. Gregory, 1909 and published on The story of Royal Eltham, http://www.gregory.elthamhistory.org.uk/ Footscray courtesy of J.D.Gammon, and the Tudor Barn, courtesy of Scott McDonald