 | 30 April 2013:
OBOGA News, the newsletter of the
Beaminster & Netherbury Grammar School Old Boys & Old Girls
Association, asked last week if any former pupils had memories of
pulling flax during the war years. A reply is received, and we hope
there may be others.
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| 28 April 2013: The first
signs of green shoots appear on some of the allotment holders' trial
flax plots (sown on 19th April).
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| 24 April 2013: Children from St. Mary’s School,
Beaminster join the project as pioneer flax growers. Pupils had
previously prepared three trial plots which were sown by children
from Key Stage 2, Key Stage 1 and members of the school’s Gardening
Club. Liaison between the museum’s project team and Stage 2 teacher
Juli Howe, eco-coordinator Lucy Eames and Gardening Club organiser
Mandy Gurd will enable the children to grow and tend the plants in
the hope of raising a healthy crop of flax for fibre. It will be in
September, at the start of the new school year, when they will know
whether their efforts have been successful and if they can process
their crop to make flax fibre. The growing trial, which will support
the curriculum in numeracy and awareness of biodiversity, aims to
give the young people a sense of living history as for over 300
years flax formed an important part of the area’s economy. It is
over 50 years since the crop was grown locally.
Not to miss out,
children at Beaminster Playgroup have also joined in by planting
their own flax plot. The four plots in different areas of the school
site each have their own giant plant label to remind everyone that
these are special experiments.
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| 20 April 2013: Flax
seed is sown on the Brandon Plot (a small community garden) in
Netherbury. This village probably had the longest history of flax
production and processing in the area. Although the site isn't ideal
by any means it is exciting to think that this trial plot brings
flax back - lets hope for successful
growing!
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| 18 April 2013: The plot in St
Mary's churchyard, Beaminster, has been sown - our flax trial has
truly begun!
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| 16 April 2013:
At last – the first real feel of
spring and there are signs on the Beaminster allotments that one
metre square plots are being prepared ready for sowing flax
seed. The fields of lovely blue flowers that we see in the
countryside today are the multi-branched varieties of flax that
farmers grow for the production of linseed oil. The variety of flax
seed, called Suzanne,
that is being sown as part of our project has been
chosen especially for growing tall, straight plants suitable for
processing into fibre.
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| 3 April 2013:
A
further meeting of the Research Group reviews the second prototype
of the book. We make significant progress in firming up the general
characteristics and shape of the book, for instance in deciding to
go for a black-and-white rather than a coloured version because of
cost constraints. We agree that the third prototype will be a first
full-contents draft including both text and positioning of graphics.
We also discuss project objectives other than the book and community
activities, for example the acquisition of tools and
machinery, an initiative to take the project to our villages, and
further use of the research budget.
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| 28 March 2013:
As part of part of our drive to involve the community we hold a
successful evening for the groups who had agreed to take part in our
initiative to encourage the local growing of flax on a small scale,
including representatives of a primary school, a group of farmers, a
further group of allotment holders, and individuals responsible for
the use of public space in one of the local villages and in
Beaminster churchyard. A member of the local press also attends. The
audience is briefed on the wider aspects of the project and given
packs of flax seeds, plot markers and instructions for planting and
weeding (normally in April). The occasion is enhanced by the
availability of mulled cider.
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| 11 March 2013:
Our
project leader is interviewed on the telephone by Dr David Scott
(for HLF), during which the latter is given a detailed account of
progress to date, including our budgetary position. The big
expenditures are yet to come. Two similar interviews will follow
later in the project.
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| 8 March 2013:
Research sub-group meets to discuss the
first prototype of the book.
The discussion focuses on the structure rather than the content of
the book and takes place against the background of the financial
constraints set by our budget and the previously agreed general
characteristics of the book. In particular the group considers the
balance to be achieved between a narrative form of document and a
compendium in which the items of content could be included in almost
any order. A compromise approach is agreed to form the basis of the
second prototype.
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| 28 February 2013:
Various meetings and conversations have
taken place during the month with the aim of crafting a special
programme for schools in the town and area. We are delighted to have
secured the enthusiastic participation of a local primary school in
a programme of flax growing and preliminary processing. Together
with our initiative to undertake a comparable programme with members
of the Beaminster Allotments Association, this constitutes a major
step towards our objective of involving the local community in our
project in a fully participative way. We order and take delivery of
a substantial package of flax seeds and incidentals for the schools
and allotment-holders.
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| 21 February 2013: Some
members revisit Flaxland to collect linum usitatissimum seed
for the 'flax for fibre' growers.
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| 8 February 2013: Research
sub-group meets to discuss progress made by individual researchers
on their areas of responsibility. We agree a preliminary list of
topics for each researcher to be included in the proposed book, with
estimates of length of text and allowances of space for graphics. We
also agree to discuss at the next meeting a first prototype of the
shape of the compendium with slots for the agreed topics and space
for graphics. The meeting benefits greatly from the presence and
participation throughout of star local historian Diana Trenchard,
attending by invitation.
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| 26 January 2013: First batch
of images forwarded to HLF.
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| 24 January 2013: At the
Beaminster Allotment Holders AGM nine allotment holders express an
interest in growing a trial plot of flax (linum usitatissimum)
for us - to be sown in mid-April.
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| 19 January 2013: Another
trip, this time to Mangerton Mill - and another worthwhile exercise.
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| 17 January 2013: Three group
members visit 'Flaxland' in Gloucestershire (see 14 December 2012)
to gain hands-on experience of flax processing and consult reference
material. It's proven an extremely useful day.
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| 11 January 2013: A rather
long meeting to track research progress. It's becoming clear that
some mysteries may have to remain unresolved, simply because the
documentary evidence we seek doesn't exist. We decide that plausible
speculation will be valid as long as we make it clear that we don't
know the actual truth.
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| 10 January 2013: Our project
leader makes a presentation at the Museum's AGM, introducing to
members the project, its aims and its expected outcomes.
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| 20 December 2013: One team
member makes a preliminary visit to Bridport Museum.
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| 19 December 2012: A group of
three visit West Coker Museum. Prince amongst lots of other useful
snippets of information is the fact that ag labs in the flax fields
generally downed six pints of strong local cider every day!
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| 14 December 2012: A group
meeting agrees a plan for learning whatever we can from the people
who provided the hemp and flax background for the BBC's Wartime
Farm series.
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| 13 December 2012: Six of the
team visit Crewkerne Museum just up the road - though it's a major
adventure with the Tunnel closed! They are way ahead of us in terms
of the preservation of their own flax and hemp heritage, but we now
have a better understanding of the main story and picked up a few
useful ideas. And it's always nice to chat to the neighbours!
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| 12 December 2012: We push the
boat out and open a Facebook account. Lots of strange people want to
be our friend!
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| 7 December 2012: Yes, the
money is definitely in our account!
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| 28 November 2012:
We leap into action on receiving
written confirmation that the starting pistol on our project has
been officially fired. Letters are sent to various local bodies
(which result subsequently in a number of congratulatory and
supportive replies).
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| 26 November 2012: Informal
confirmation that we have permission to start the project - or, more
specifically, that we can start spending money. In reality, the
project 'started' back in May, because we had to work hard even to
create the application in the first place.
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| 23 November 2012: Having
satisfied the media's voracious appetite for interviews (!) we
settle down to the serious business of running the project. One of
the challenges will be that all members of the project team are
already involved in several other activities in the Museum,
including the design and implementation of the already agreed 2013
exhibitions, so resourcing is a significant issue. One of our early
decisions is to recruit 'contacts' from beyond the immediate Museum
community.
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| 21 November 2012: The media
release is despatched to a wide variety of organisations.
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| 16 November 2012: Group photo
outside Yarn Barton, a Beaminster building with links to the flax
industry.
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| 14 November 2012: Having
finally found the online forms required (we couldn't find them
earlier for the simple reason that they weren't there!), we make the
necessary submissions.
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| 13 November 2012:
Our PR specialist is briefed on all aspects of the project and asked
to prepare the media release to go out early morning 21 November
embargoed for 0001 hrs 22 November. We're all in exciting new
territory here!
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| 2 November 2012: Our team
member who said she'd eat her trainers if we were given any funds
carries out her promise - fortunately in the form of a 'trainer
cake'. An initial informal project meeting agrees some important
internal controls.
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| 27 October 2012: The period
of intense action and heavy responsibility begins.
We prepare to carry out the first three tasks required by HLF –
requesting permission formally to start the project, applying for
our grant to be transferred and the arrangement of our first media
release. Immediate problem: we can’t find the online form for the
first two tasks.
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| 26 October 2012: Wow! We did
it! The long wait is over with the news that our application has
been successful. But we can't tell anybody yet; this is what it must
be like when you get your knighthood in the Queen's Birthday Honours
(this blog entry is retrospective, by the way)!
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| 2 August 2012: We've been
having such fun with the admin! HLF's email server started rejecting
all our emails, so communication became somewhat tricky. In
addition, we received notification that the signed declaration was
invalid because the signature was from the main contact, not a
separate person. This was because HLF couldn't update the main
contact details until they received the application, so we were in a
bit of a Catch-22 situation. Despite several phone calls and
assurances that the form would be updated on receipt, this still
didn't happen. We just learned today that the change has been made
on the database but cannot be made to the form itself, so nothing
more needs to be done prior to assessment. Yippee!
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| 11 July 2012: There has been
much to-ing and fro-ing required in order to complete the form -
right up to today. We eventually worked out what all the questions
meant and accepted that the costs must align with the way the form works, not the way our brains work. It's been a bit painful
at times, but the finished product is undoubtedly better than it
would have been had we not checked our assumptions. The online
submission has finally been made; the hardcopy declaration will follow
shortly.
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| 30 June 2012: The webmaster
has started to fill in the online HLF application form and alerted
the group to the fact that it doesn't quite match the format of the
finalised text. More emailing required yet, alas!
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| 29 June 2012: The fifth
meeting has finally agreed that the project should be called
'Hanging by a Thread', which carries the sense of local people's
lives being wholly dependent on the industry without the implicit
negativity of the rival suggestion, 'Losing the thread'. The
webmaster has accepted responsibility for tacking a 'research
control page' on to this blog (see above) so that we can share our
news and avoid duplication - and for completing the online HLF
application based on the final (?) text in the fourth draft, plus
profile data to be acquired from various sources. In theory, we need
no more meetings until October.
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| 26 June 2012: Yes, bang on
schedule, today we got the fourth draft in our inboxes. Surely we
must be getting very close now!
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| 22 June 2012: We've had our
fourth meeting. It's mostly down to detail, which is easier now
everyone is agreed on the big picture.
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| 19 June 2012: We're getting
into the swing of this now! Today we were sent the third
draft for review at the fourth meeting next Friday.
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| 15 June 2012: We've had a
third meeting to review the second draft and subsequent emails. We
focused our attention on Sections 1 (Project Summary) and 3 (Our
Heritage & Project) of the application.
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| 12 June 2012: We've received
our second draft of the application. Let the email debate
recommence! The combination of face-to-face meetings and email
correspondence seems to be working.
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| 8 June 2012: We've held our
second meeting to review the draft application. The general research
scope and possible outcomes were confirmed. We all agree on the
importance of the schools programme and having as interactive
element in our proposed new display. And we've all been given our
jobs!
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| 31 May 2012: The
emails have been flying around as we try to clarify our own
thinking, bearing in mind the actual questions on the HLF
application form. We've struggled with some terminology, eg:
'digital applications', and are still undecided about the exact
nature of some of our own aims, eg: whether any resultant book
should be fact or fiction, but the waters are certainly less muddy
than they were. Our leader has drafted an application based on all
these communications. One particular issue is finding regular slots
when we can all meet.
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| 9 May 2012: We've had our
first meeting and appointed our project leader. After discussing
some alternative suggestions we agreed quite quickly that what we
really wanted to do was explore the flax and hemp industry in
Beaminster and the surrounding villages, primarily to plug a
significant gap in our coverage. We decided we needed a catchy
title, but haven't come up with one yet.
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| 8 May 2012: We've registered
our interest in applying for HLF funding for the project and have
been assigned our unique project reference number. We can access the
online application form. It looks as though the form will require us
to channel our thinking very precisely.
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