Report on 20th January Meeting - Covering letter

Dear Local Historian

I am pleased to enclose the report on this day for your society’s information. At the end is a list of contact names for all societies taking part.

The final point in the plenary feedback suggested that there was support for further meetings and this is also supported in the feedback forms. I now look at ways in which this could be achieved. One would be to form a new association. This has been done in other counties and I have been in touch with 3 of them. They mentioned practical days to aid the development of research skills often in conjunction with their Record Offices. All talk of the difficulty of recruiting volunteers to run their organisation. In all cases they did not have an existing county society with an involvement in local history. Would you support formation of a new association?

At this point it is appropriate to mention the role of the Hampshire Field Club and Archaeology Society which exists for those who care about the heritage and environment of Hampshire. It is organised in 5 sections and three contributed to January’s meeting which was organised by the Local History section. This organises a programme of events about Hampshire’s local history. This typically consists of an annual lecture in January by a notable expert. In April recent day conferences have been about Victorian Hampshire, the Civil War. There is a summer visit to a place of interest; this year we hope to go to Hartley Wintney with inputs from the local preservation society and a visit to West Green House. In the autumn we hold the section AGM at different places around the county with members of the local society talking about their locality and leading a tour. The other sections have similar programmes. See www.fieldclub.hants.org.uk for information about HFC.

One possibility might be to add to this programme a day for Local Societies with most of the input coming from local groups. HOWEVER as I said on the 20th I believe for this to succeed there would need to be involvement from people involved with their local society. The present section committee is quite small and organising the 20th January meeting made heavy demands. We would either need people with local group background to join it or, perhaps, a sub-group to plan and run events.  This is crucial for without involvement from local society members progress cannot be made.  The time commitment would be limited but vital.

Dick Selwood helpfully suggested that the Hampshire Archaeology Committee directory could be expanded to include LH societies. Comment on this is welcome.

I would welcome comments on these ideas plus other suggestions from all societies by 30th April. Once we have had your responses we will put forward proposals.

Yours sincerely

Derek Spruce

Sent to participating societies 16th February 2007