Site Last Updated
2 January 2008

Capturing the past: Oral History recording

A group of Orchard Group members, including young graduates of the recent videofilming course, and members of the Lynsted with Kingsdown Society, came together on 8th July to learn how to interview people. The day-course, held in the Community Room at Lynsted church, aimed to provide us with the skills to interview senior members of the community effectively. We felt it was important to record the lives and experiences of the older parishioners before the chance was lost for ever!

Although the course was arranged primarily to prepare us to make a record of the history of cherry farming and harvesting in our area, the philosophy of the Park Farm Cherry Orchard Project is to ‘spread the word’ (and use of equipment) to cover other aspects of local history. 

Our tutor, Roger Kitchen, of Kitchen’s Ink Creative Solutions, took us through the Golden Rules of interviewing, how to pose questions, how to listen (important!), what recording equipment to use and how to make an effective archive record. In the second half of the day, three brave people (Maggie Goodwin, Joyce Gates and David Bage) offered themselves as ‘guinea pigs’ for the rest of us to practice on. Roger rounded off a fact-packed day with some absorbing film of other local history projects involving audio/oral recording.

Once we acquire some equipment through the Orchard Group’s Heritage Lottery funding, we will be fired up and ready to go!  We have built up a ‘little list’ of potential interviewees to approach. But would anyone reading this who might be willing to share his or her experiences of ‘the old days’, particularly concerning cherry husbandry and harvesting, please contact John Disney (phone 521 580), Julie Barrett (522 921), Tom English (522 417) or the writer?

Bob Baxter. 

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