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How You Can Help

A outing for the Shortland family in 1919
Shortland family outing 1919
Asher Abbott, Frank Shortland, Clara Westley, Grandma Shortland,
Elsie Shortland, John Shortland, Fanny Shortland (mother)


To tell the history of the town as fully as possible, we need your help - your time, your memories, your photos, your stories. If you could spare some time to help us, or if you have any sort of information you think could be of interest to us, please get in touch by e-mail.

You can see the range of things we are doing, by looking on the News page.

To give some examples of how you might be able to help us with information:

  • Maybe in your collection of family snapshots you have photos of the town, the townsfolk, events and special occasions - perhaps the only remaining record of these things?
  • Do you have cine and video footage of things like events, parades, celebrations?
  • And what about memories - stories you can tell or your parents told you? If we don't get them recorded they will be gone forever, and lost to future generations. We need people to tell us about things like the shops, the factories, the clubs and pubs, parades, events, schools, churches, chapels, and so on.
South End Junior School - trip to Belgium 1960
Passport photograph for South End Junior School's trip to Belgium 1960 - in the back ground High St South

Back  row: 1 Michael Cox, 2 Stewart Ingram, 3 Colin Clark, 4 Philip Cave, 5 (?) , 6 Paul Buckby, 7 Howard Elliot ?
Second row: 8 (?) , 9 Jonathan Stranger, 10 (?) , 11 Barry Scholes, 12 Vivien Taylor, 13 Shirley/Janet Moore
14 Elizabeth De Chastelane, 15 (?) , 16 (?) , 17 Jane Penn, 18 Elizabeth Nunley, 19 ? Keech, 20 Noel Brown, 21 ? Curtis
Front row: 22 Rosemary Mason, 23 Barbara Wagstaff, 24 Yvonne Watkins, 25 Valerie Panther, 26 Susan Astle
27 Mrs Neville, 28 Mr Harley, 29 Miss Wendy Hooton, 30 Denise ?, 31 Susan Attley, 32 Penny Whitwell, 33 Anne Wheatley

Mrs Neville's husband (a teacher at another Rushden School) also came, as did Jane Penn's older sister (she may have been called Jennifer) owing to one child having to drop out. It was very difficult for a lot of parents
to let us go on this trip as the shoe trade in Rushden had a bad patch with a lot of short time, making money very tight.

On the holiday my camera got sand in it so this is the only photograph I have. Valerie Beales.

Does anybody have any more pictures of this trip? or can you fill in or correct any of the names given here.
Valerie will write a little about the trip, and we'll be publishing the complete article in due course, so any help
with completing the details will be very welcome.


Charabanc Trip in the 1930s
Charabanc Trip
The vehicle is outside the Bell in Odell. It is thought that this was a trip around
North Bedfordshire in about 1935. Can You help us with any more information?

This butcher's van is thought to be standing in Avenue Road.

Can you tell us more about the van or about the people in the photo?

This is a wide-ranging and exciting project, being done by a group of local volunteers. Would you like to be one of them?

We need people who would be interested in:

  • Researching Topics
  • Interviewing People
  • Collating Information
  • Writing and Transcribing Articles and Stories for the site
  • Scanning and Preparing Images for the web pages
  • Producing the pages and linking them to make up completed sections

All we need from you is your time, your interest, and a willingness to learn new skills if you need to. Colleagues are there to support you. You can work solo on small topics, if you prefer to do so - larger topics may be done by a team working in a co-ordinated way. Just tell us what sort of time you could spare and over what period, and we'll do our best to work with that. Research work can of course go on at any time to suit volunteers. Note: The project has been running for 15 years and is continuing. (2022)

If this sounds like the sort of thing you'd like to have a go at, then get in touch with us. E-mail us using the link at the top or bottom of this page. It only costs you a short time to check this out, and you could make a big difference to what the project can achieve.

The story of the town and the lives of the people here belongs to us all. Please, help us to tell it.


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