Fownhope Community Archive

The Fownhope Community Archive of original documents and copies includes research resource files with copies of documents, press extracts, minute books, business ledgers, and notes from library, record offices and web sources, parallel set of files of laminated display material used in exhibitions – already more than 4,000 items – with a searchable database

Much of the research material is also kept on laptop, with some 2800 files, arranged by theme and in some cases by period, including several hundred searchable databases
All these are sorted by subject into more than 50 ‘themes’ , (eg agriculture, education, health) sub-divided where needed (eg river transport, parish council) and by time period where relevant. The time periods are – life before 1832, between 1832 to 1918, from 1919 to 2000, and from 2001 to the present day.

The archive also contains more than 70 recordings on mini-disk and CD of interviews of local residents’ memories of local life –

• Copies of most local OS and estate maps
• A complete series of the community magazine, The Flag from 1996, and a few parish magazines which have survived from post-war years
• Parish register indexes of baptisms, marriages and burials from 1538 – recently started and unlikely to be complete for some time!
• *Copies of annual voters lists – almost complete between 1914 and 2002 , and a selection from 1849 to 1910, being added to as they are released.