Goostrey Parish Archive

We’re just about getting used to the huge variety of work here at The Blackden Trust.   It’s a real eye-opener of how much goes into running the Trust, and it’s become our weekly highlight.   

Over the last few weeks we’ve been market researching everything from rare books to creative writing lessons, and prices for future courses, trying our hand at blogging, drinking a lot of hot chocolate and helping to create something very exciting: the Goostrey Parish Archive.

Goostrey is a village with a long and fascinating history, but that history’s survival depends on local people.   So, a group of volunteers (including us) are aiming to create an archive of documents, photographs, oral history and any other kinds of artefacts from local people, so that we can make Goostrey’s history available to the public.  This is great news and we can’t wait to get started, especially because we’ve already seen a glimpse of the wonderful things that there are in the village...

... like this brilliant, but faded, photograph of St Luke’s Church, taken in the late nineteenth century.

And this engraving made before the graveyard was extended in about 1860.

Bethan and Phil





Spring Lift Off

As flowers appear in unplanned places and the garden becomes more colourful, we begin the countdown to the season of events. 

It starts in April, but first we have to prepare and erect the multi-purpose tent, where we run some of our courses, and serve teas to our visitors, and feed the students during the archaeological training excavation in August.

First, the metal frame is put together over the only level area of grass in the garden.

As soon as it is off the ground, we clean the metal frame of the roof.   It’s unreachable once the tent is up!  This is the fourth year we have raised the structure, so we know that we have to follow the counterintuitive instructions to put the canopy on before we raise the roof.

Gently and carefully we pull the canopy over the frame.

We fix the canopy to the frame and then with a co-ordinated lift by the strong and a fitting of the legs by the nimble, the tent is up.  

In go the side panels …..

…. and the workers sit down for a well-deserved lunch. 

The tent is up: we have lift off!    Come and join us!   

It is a beautiful place, where, in the sixteenth century Old Medicine House, we shall be writing creatively; working with herbs; and discovering  the history of the people who have lived here. 

For details of what we are doing, go to:

http://www.theblackdentrust.org.uk/events.php