As with all places, the face of Halesworth changes through the years. Organisations come and go, major milestones are celebrated, new facilities appear, some things come to a close. Recording these events in a systematic way can be a significant help to future local historians.
The Suffolk Local History Council runs a Local Recorders Scheme throughout Suffolk administering a network of volunteers to ensure that that the ‘present’ is adequately recorded at a local level for the ‘future’.
In 2015 Halesworth Museum took up the Local Recorder Role for Halesworth. Pauline Wilcock, our Volunteer Coordinator, is currently in charge of this task.
The scheme operates at a parish level, with some parishes being villages of only a few hundred people, whilst others are large towns with tens of thousands of inhabitants. In terms of population, Halesworth is somewhere in the middle. Local Recorders note major events and changes at a degree of detail which reflects the size of the parish. Whilst a small village might record the topic of every meeting of the local Gardening Society, a larger town needs to record at a less detailed level. The Museum notes significant happenings, referencing newspaper articles and collecting leaflets and other ephemera relating to major events in Halesworth this year.
At the end of the year we submit an annual report to the Suffolk Local History Council which is deposited at the Suffolk Record Office and available to future researchers, together with the collected items. We also publish publish that report here on our website