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About Us
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Rushden & District History Society held its inaugural meeting in May 1991 and issued the first “Risdene Echo” in September of the same year, as a quarterly magazine. Our meetings were then held at Rushden Hall but when our regular audience topped 50 this forced a move to a larger hall. The varied programme of speakers now regularly attracts audiences of over 80 at our monthly meetings, now held at
In January 2002 a small group was formed to start to create a research base to help anyone researching people or places in the town, called Rushden Research. We began with the 1901 census which had just been released for public scrutiny, and our aim was to have it on display at the first “Discovery Day” at the end of March. We managed to complete but it was not fully checked, so we later did a full recheck and then went on to transcribe the other parishes which with Rushden, make up the old administrative area called the “Higham Ferrers Hundred” (13 parishes in all) and produced it as a CD in time for the next “Discovery Day” in the autumn of 2003. Since then we have been transcribing and indexing Baptist & Methodist records and have recently started on the
A closer link has been established between those interested in the history of Rushden and we are now working with two independent groups,
We are also working with the Rushden branch of the Northamptonshire Family History Society on some of our transcription projects. Several members belong to both societies. Rushden Research group applied for a grant from the Heritage Lottery Fund to enable us to create an interactive website so that the fruits of our research can reach a worldwide audience. The grant was awarded in January 2007 and after two years of hard work by our dedicated team we have celebrated the launch of a DVD "A History of Rushden" and the installation of an IT Kiosk in Rushden Museum. This marks the end of our funding by the Heritage Lottery Fund - our furture work will now be self-funded. The project, “History of Rushden – Hearts & Soles”, is continuing. We are now looking to the wider community to get involved to help us to improve the web site. Anyone who wants to get involved can chose to help by interviewing, typing, researching, writing articles, collecting documents and pictures or help us with administration. In order to present the researched material and pictures we have to learn how to convert the files into web pages, and workshops are held each week. Click here for the dates. This project gives everyone a chance to share memories of living and working in Rushden and the surrounding villages, and this website makes them available to a worldwide audience. If those memories are not recorded for future generations, they will be lost. Please consider helping us - read more here. |
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