Our annual Heritage Bank Exhibition, held in the Village Hall on Saturday 15 th September 2007, was another great success and attracted visitors from as far away as Australia as well as local villagers and their relatives.
One man, visiting England from his home in Australia , was able to see old photographs of his ancestors at Buriton school and there were also families from Nottingham and Leicester who made special trips to see the exhibition and to visit their family roots.
The latest exhibition yielded over 100 more old photographs for the Heritage Bank archives – bringing the total collected over the last five years to over 1,800. We feel that this is a real achievement for such a small community.
This year, Colin Harfield of Petersfield brought along a special album of photographs of Buriton which had been taken 120 years ago. It had been sitting in his cupboard for many years – but the quality of the photographs is amazing. They had been taken by the professional photographer J Milman Brown and he has signed the album in October 1887 when he presented it to Mr Forder who lived locally when he established the local limeworks in about 1860. It is great to know that such a wonderful record of the community still exists.
Quite a lot of visitors were tracing their family trees and, as in previous years, the exhibition re-united a number of long-lost friends and relatives – a completely unforeseen aspect of our project, but we always learn a bit more about the local history of the parish from their reminiscences.
The exhibition also revealed more information about the history of local forestry activities on the South Downs. This new material, including a number of old photographs, will be available for the Village Association’s autumn meeting on Tuesday 23 rd October.
