Little
Thurlow Parish Council, probably like every other Parish Council
in the land, began wondering in 1997 what special activities it
should sponsor to mark the millennium in the year 2000. We wanted
to devise a project that would be genuinely local in character,
would involve as many people as possible, and would oVer some
possession of permanent value to every household. We therefore
wanted something that would not literally go up in smoke, like
a bonfire, or down the throat, like a drinks party. No doubt private
enterprise will in any case provide memorable events of this kind
when the time comes . . .
Instead,
we hit on the idea of producing a modern equivalent of Domesday.
Thurlow was in fact mentioned in the first Domesday book of
1086 and had its origins well before that, so it has already
enjoyed a history of over a thousand years. We planned to involve
the whole community and it is in many ways still
a community in compiling a record of life today and in
the recent past, drawing on the experiences and memories of
everyone living here in 1999. This volume tries to provide that
record.
The book divides into three main parts. First, there is an anthology
of general essays written by villagers past and present about
different aspects of village life: for example, the history
(both human and natural); the land and its use; important institutions
such as the Church, the school, the pub and the W.I.; major
families who have left their mark on the village both
the famous ones like the Frinks, the Ryders and the Vesteys,
and the equally important local dynasties of the Day, Eley,
Smith and Rowlinson families which are all still represented
here today; and stories of life and work here from those with
memories going back a generation or more. Secondly, there is
a section derived from questionnaires and the tapes of interviews
that were conducted with each household to record people's impressions
and experiences of the village. There is a separate piece on
each family or household where it was possible to undertake
an interview (86 out of a possible total of 101) and these are
arranged in the sequence of the Parish register, as in a continuous
walk around the village. And finally, there is a corresponding
plates section with pictures of all the dwellings in the village,
in the same sequence as the interviews and including in the
pictures as many as possible of the inhabitants. The overall
survey is as complete as we could make it, though of course
it could never be entirely fixed and final since life and change
have gone on even as we have been working. A few of the people
interviewed have now left the village and, sadly, one or two
have died.
The
working-party has acted throughout as a team in planning the
volume, but there have also been some particular divisions of
labour between us. Mary Hilton and Iris Eley undertook the arduous
work of interviewing all the households and transcribing the
results. Kate Atherton has been especially concerned with writing
and coordinating all the historical and demographic material.
Pauline Crooks and her family have undertaken the photography,
and Pauline herself did most of the keyboarding of the volume.
Jeremy Mynott edited the text and arranged the production. But
we have all cheerfully interfered with each other's work and
we present the results very much as a joint effort.
We would like to thank everyone who has been involved in this
project, whether as contributors, informants or advisers. And
we would like to record our special thanks to those who have generously
offered financial support, without which the work of preparation
and production could never have been undertaken. Edmund Vestey
made a handsome private contribution, matching the initial subvention
from the Parish Council, and Suffolk Acre made a crucial award
from their Millennium Fund to cover the high costs of the colour
origination and printing. We were also grateful for the technical
professional help received from Hamish McIlwrick in supervising
manufacture, Deborah McLauchlan for disk manipulation and copyediting,
and Dale Tomlinson for design.
Each household is to be presented with a copy of the finished
volume at the end of 1999 as a personal possession and it is
expected that other copies will be made available for public
sale thereafter to others. And just to demonstrate that this
really is the end of one millennium and the beginning
of the next we have also established a website on www.littlethurlow.org
for interested enquirers anywhere in the world. The tapes, questionnaires,
texts and a larger selection of the photographs will be kept
as an archive for any future possible research use.
We
finish with this thought. This is no history or academic study
of a grand or sophisticated kind. It is just a chronicle of
how things are now in one small village in rural Suffolk, and
how they have seemed to ordinary people in recent memory. But
don't therefore be deceived into thinking that these are only
'the short and simple annals of the poor', in the words of Thomas
Gray's famous Elegy. In fact, even in a village of just
over 200 people, the more journalistic slogan 'all human life
is there' really is true. As we discovered, and as you will
see...
KATE ATHERTON, PAULINE CROOKS, IRIS ELEY, MARY
HILTON and JEREMY MYNOTT
1
March 1999
