Blyth School Records Find New Home at Woodhorn - June 16th 2010
16 April 2010.
A unique collection of records from a Blyth school have recently been delivered to their new home at the Northumberland Archives at Woodhorn thanks to the hard work and dedication of a team of volunteers.
The records from Plessey Road School were handed over to the 6 local history devotees when the school was closing and it has taken 3 years of hard work to sort and digitise the information. Anne Wright, Dorothy Turnbull, Una Arnesen, Bob Widdowson, Brian Muter and Gordon Young first came together 10 years ago though a family history class at the Blyth Resource and Initiative Centre. They found that local history had become such a passion for them that following the course they worked on census records and even produced a book on Bebside Hall.
The Plessey Road School records which date from 1892 until the 1970s include school registers and head teachers’ log books. “The information they contained was fascinating,” said volunteer Una Arnesen. “They are not just lists of names and dates, but together provide a social record of life in Blyth at the end of the 19th century and into the twentieth. You can see that there was so much poverty and hardship about.”
“In the early days,” said Gordon Young, “the records show that children from the travelling circus even came to the school. Interestingly it is also recorded that the school closed during the circus visit – probably because everyone wanted to see the show.”
Sue Wood, Head of Collections at Woodhorn is delighted with the deposit. “The ladies and gentlemen have done a fabulous job sorting the records out. This is the only collection of school records that we have that have been studied and sorted in this detail.”
Before the information can be made accessible to the public, a little work needs to be carried out behind the scenes by the archive staff. “We are going to make it a priority to get the information on to our electronic catalogue as soon as we can, but we have a little housekeeping to do first,” said Sue. “I am sure many people will find the records hugely interesting as well as extremely valuable for their family history research.”
The electronic catalogue for the Northumberland Archives at Woodhorn can be found via the archives page of the main Woodhorn website.