‘We really enjoyed the presentation’ Peter and Mandy Shaw
‘It was excellent’ Phil Jones, chair of Pontefract Archaeology
‘Brillant – If I get the chance, I would see it again’ Jacki Sanderson
‘I am really glad I was persuaded to come; there was so much I didn’t know’ Renny England
‘From what I have been told, I am really sorry I had to miss it’. Iain Mitchell
‘The content and presentation was excellent. Congratulations to all who were involved in putting it together’ Betty Wright
‘It was very good. We’ve lived here a long time and we just we just didn’t know or were aware of what happened here during the war’ Carolyn and John Popham
Such praise is not often received!
As part of the CA’s VE Day celebration, the Time Team dug into their archive and created a presentation based on elements of audio recording made of resident’s life stories and supplemented by written testimony and research to verify the assertions made. Most of the contributors had lived all their lives in either Hillam, Burton Salmon or Monk Fryston including their early years, growing up and living through WW2. Their collective experiences, collated to chart the progress of the war from 1936, when a Zepplin passed over the villages, to the auction of surplus army vehicles in the late 1940’s provided a stunning insight never before fully understood or publicly revealed. It clearly illustrated the many facets of the war which residents experienced and the resilience they displayed.
An example, of the archive material is this slide of the local Homeguard Unit parading past MF Post Office and actually passing part of a temporarily removed road block.
Alongside the presentation was a display of local wartime memorabilia. This provided further surprising insights into what happened in our villages throughout the war. We are sure anyone who attended the Presentation will tell you there was much, much more.
We have been asked by a number of those who missed the presentation will you do it again? If sufficient people register their interest on the CA website, we will ‘do it again’ later this year.
Please register your interest at Wartime Memories Presentation | Monk Fryston & Hillam Community Association
