Our latest annual exhibition in September yielded yet more old photographs for the Heritage Bank archives – bringing the total collected to almost 2,500. We feel that this is a real achievement for such a small community.
Amongst the new material on display at this year’s event were scores of old postcards of the parish. The Heritage Bank project has collected almost 100 different postcards of the village, some dating from over a hundred years ago.
The postcards provide a fascinating insight into how the village has looked over the years and, blown up to A3 in size, they make fascinating viewing: the quality and sharpness of most of the early photographs is very impressive.
But we are always looking for more old postcards and photographs of Buriton. We are sure that there are still more that we haven’t seen.
Also this year, Michael Reeves of Buriton had found details of the sale of parts of the Buriton Estate in 1927. The sale had been arranged by the executors of the late Lothian Bonham Carter.
As well as over 60 cottages and 2,350 acres of land, the sale documents provide details of all the farming stock that was on offer. The catalogue lists all the sheep, pigs and cattle that were for sale and includes names of cart-horses such as Boxer, Traveller, Drummer and Champion.
As in previous years, the exhibition re-united a number of friends and relatives with members of the Harfield family travelling again from Leicester, Wellingborough, Nottingham and Sussex . These re-unions are a completely unforeseen aspect of our project – but we usually learn a bit more about the local history of the parish from family reminiscences.
