Nostalgia 'n' nibbles
This month, instead of having a speaker, we enjoyed a ‘Night of Nostalgia’ when we had a rare opportunity to explore our valuable archive of record books, minutes, photographs and press cuttings. After the usual business, our President Penny Bailey read the minutes of our first official meeting in 1920 and in the list of those attending were familiar names of several families still living in the village today. For a penny they could have a cup of tea and a bun which committee members took turns to provide – no small undertaking for more than eighty members! This attendance (from a village much smaller than it is now) shows the importance of the WI at that time in providing local women with an opportunity to socialise and learn new things.
Penny invited Gill Brown, who has organized and maintained the archive for many years, to give a brief introduction. Gill explained that our collection is valuable as social history and that while minute books are thought to be boring, reading old books gives “a very definite flavour of each decade”. Our Institute seems to have stopped meeting after 1941 for the remainder of World War II, although there is evidence that it joined in the war effort by canning fruit. Some books are missing between 1920 and 1941 but from 1947 onwards all our records are complete. Wherever they exist they provide interesting glimpses of life in Yoxall at the time. A recurring theme was support for Yoxall Cottage Hospital, by egg collections and fund-raising, before it was taken over by the NHS. A particularly interesting document is a village survey undertaken in 1965 to mark the Golden Jubilee of the National Federation of Women’s Institutes. This includes lots of photos of the village taken just at the time when the ‘new estate’ was being built. Twenty-five years later Gill Brown and the late Margaret Hopper marked Yoxall WI’s 70th birthday by adding a supplement – a revised survey for 1990 with photos taken from the same spots to show any changes.
ARFONA (CENTRE) WAS ABLE TO SEE HERSELF ON THE INTERNET IN THIS 1965 PHOTO BELOW
Sustained by plentiful supplies of wine and ‘nibbles’, our members were able to divide their time between chatting to others and studying the archives spread over several tables. The photographs were very popular as people looked for old friends and relatives or younger versions of themselves. Most of them date from the 1960s onwards but there are a few earlier ones such as the one below, taken on a visit to Liverpool in 1935. Because there are lots of photos on this website, a laptop computer showing all our web pages was also available at the meeting, mainly for the benefit of those members who don’t have access to a computer or are not confident about using the internet. (Click here to see more photos).
Click here to see the names of some of these ladies visiting Liverpool.
Lots of interest was shown in all areas of the display and everyone seemed to enjoy the opportunity to reminisce with others and learn more about the history of their WI and their village.
Visitors will be very welcome to our next meeting on November 14th when the speaker will be Ann Heywood on ‘Flowers for Christmas’. For further information please contact Penny Bailey on the link at the bottom of this page.