2025 AGM: Chair’s Report

by

Jim McNeill

Chair’s Report on Activities 2024-2025

  1. Introduction

2024-25 has been an especially enjoyable and action-packed year.

Of striking importance to our Group was the involvement of our Committee and general members is research and community initiatives. Such initiatives included:

  • Time-consuming on-line research into the history of the Wissington Sugar Factory,
  • Donating and archiving Romano-British finds from Wretton,
  • Using and teaching others in the use of our new drone,
  • Helping with local history displays for pupils at All Saints Academy,
  • Aiding others in the use of AI to improve presentation of information to our communities,
  • Authoring articles for the Village Pump parish magazine,
  • Leading public talks,
  • Sharing of old photographs and cine films….and so much more

Events & Talks

2024

  • October: Open Archive Weekend – a huge success!
  • December: Christmas get-together and party at The Pineapple Coach House, Stoke Ferry

2025

  • April: Colourful Local Characters: Merlin Minshall, Geoff Allen, Gordon Parker
  • March: Lynn Road Exhibition at All Saints Academy
  • June: Weekend Whittington History Display at Christ Church, Whittington – part of the church’s centenary celebrations
  • July: Local Film Day – Life in Whittington in the 1950s & 60s, Gallipoli and Sandringham School, Farming in Boughton in the 1950s, French Football Team visit in 1982, Life on a Fen Farm in the 1950s and 60s.
  • August: Presentation of Romano-British finds at Wretton at Methwold Community Hall
  • September: Contributing to the Wissington Sugar Factory’s centenary display.

Jim McNeill delivered two talks: Wells-next-the-Sea (Norfolk’s Conscientious Objectors in WW1) and The Wellington Public House, Feltwell (The Agricultural Workers Union in Victorian Norfolk).

  • Committee Members

For personal reasons Dave Deighton and Maureen (Mo) Austin has had to take time out, for personal reasons. Our thanks to each of them for their hard work, skills and enthusiasm over the year.

Three new members were co-opted and welcomed onto the Committee: Lauren Arellano, Alexis Brand and Roger Warner. Our thanks to them all for their valuable contributions.

Your Committee has continued to successfully collaborative working with Oxborough and Methwold History Groups, and the Brecks Rivers Project.

  • Your Community History Archive
  • Books, Pamphlets, Historical Documents, Maps, Artifacts and previous displays and accompanying handouts are stored in the old Doctor’s Surgery, All Saints Academy.
  • Cataloguing of contents continues…though there is still a way to go!
  • We are painstakingly valuing the contents of the Archive (and our equipment) which we will update as we get new items. We hope to present figures to our members over the forthcoming year. Once we have a baseline valuation we can then easily update the figures.
  • Your Archive hosts back issues of the Village Pump –they are a gold mine of history on the people, businesses and activities in our district since the 1970s.
  • Digitalisation of videos and cine film was made possible through the Brecks Rivers Project and local photographer Andy Cobbold.
  • We continue to record, archive and present ‘life histories’ of people in our villages.
  • Use of drone to collect images and record physical changes in our area.

Purchases

  1. We had to replace our A3 photocopier/scanner with an A4 one.
  2. Continued to buy maps, books and digital media for our Archive.
  3. Books and a school record book were re-bound, and we continued to copy and laminate old maps.
  4. Our new website
    1. Over the year the website had some 4,500 visitors.
    1. It hosts 150 posts and continues to expand.
    1. As well as posting materials of interest to the general public we continue to develop history materials for use in All Saints School and St Martin’s in Shouldham. In time we will also offer resources to other schools.
  5. Funding successes
  6. We continued with successful funding applications; awarded £1283 over the year.
  7. We have excellent relationships with local funders who see us as achievers and a ‘safe pair of hands’.
  8. Promotion of our Group
    1. Monthly 2-3 page articles in the wonderful Village Pump continued.
    1. Our Facebook Page achieved 300+ followers.
    1. We have 80+ people on our growing emailing list.

Jim McNeill, Chair, Stoke Ferry & District History Group

October 2025