FAMILY HISTORY DAY

June 18th 2005 was our 2nd family history all day event. A hot sunny day brought a steady stream of members & visitors to St Peter’s Church Hall. The morning & afternoon saw all the usual facilities available to help people with their family history research & we heard of successes & progress made.
A display board showed the on going work projects of the Fenland Family History Society with general information & photos.
The bookstall was set up & Martyn Thompson was able to display the latest Monumental Inscriptions recorded now in CD form.
Light refreshments were available all day, the kitchen being manned by Barbara Bullen & her helpers.
The first talk by Brian Jones, who stepped in at the last minute due to the illness of the original speaker, was on the arrival of CHRISTIANITY IN THE FENS.
He spoke of the establishment of the abbeys in fenland, mentioning especially the one at Thorney. He also spoke of the arrival of the Huguenots who came from Holland to escape catholic persecution. They brought different & beneficial skills to fenland & integrated well in to the area. Their descendants are around today although the spellings of their names may have changed due to the difficulty in the pronunciation of ‘foreign names’ by the local fen men. Brian’s talk was illustrated by slides & at the end of his talk there was much discussion & a question & answer session, there being several people present with possible Huguenot connections.
Brian’s talk was about OPEN SPACES
Brian took us from the times of & what was meant by common lands, to the time when people were allocated strips of land in various parts of their locality, through to the Act of Parliament which established enclosure of lands & the strips of land being sold to make larger areas of land until most were eventually owned by two or three people only. Again illustrated by slides it made the explanations easy to understand.
After lunch Lyn Hopwood gave us a marvellous display of VICTORIAN CLOTHES.
An avid collector, Lyn was able to give us the history of the clothes she displayed, how she obtained them & how they were preserved for the future (& what was to happen to the collection on her demise). One very slim young lady was chosen to be dressed, very bravely for it was a very hot afternoon, as a Victorian lady, from the unmentionables below to her morning dress. Lynn also had members of the audience dress in various capes, hats & accessories to show the clothes of the different classes of people of the time. After wearing the clothes for the afternoon we then saw the young lady disrobed, much to her relief, of her dress, petticoats & corsets. Yes she did stop at the unmentionables!
At the end of her talk Lyn let the audience examine & handle the clothes. We were able to see the beadwork & fine stitching on some of the gowns, & Lyn was kept very busy answering questions for quite some time.
The very enjoyable day ended with a question & answer session with Brian Jones in his usual light- hearted manner & he was thanked by the chairman, especially for stepping in at the last moment for the first speaker.
[Barbara Holmes]