Aldbourne Heritage Centre

Heritage Lottery Fund logoAldbourne Band 150 year heritage project logoIn 2013 the Friends of Aldbourne Band launched a project to record and present the heritage and history of Aldbourne band.

The Friends applied for and received a grant from the Heritage Lottery Fund All Our Stories

 

 

James Sheppard introducing the Heritage Project at Upham Road January 2013The Band wanted to make a public announcement to mark the beginning of the Project and decided that their Annual Concert at Upham Road Church in Swindon, (the 51st,) would be a good place. We had a stand up banner publicising the Project rushed into completion ( it was intended for the Open Day,) and James Sheppard the Band Chairman made a little speech about what we intended. Incidentally, Dave Aston at that point our Project leader, was awarded “Bandsman of the Year”.

Heritage Project Open Morning April 2013 Richard Hughes and Claire Perry, MPA event was held on 27 April 2013 to gather memories, artifacts etc. Claire Perry MP is seen here with Richard Hughes.

Leaflet delivered  to every house in the village to publicise coffee morning April 2013

Heritage Project Open Morning April 2013 featuring Jesse Jones and Gavin Dixon

The Memorial Hall saw a constant flow of attendees, many of whom brought dusty old boxes of old concert programmes, posters, contest programmes, Committee Minutes, newspaper articles and clippings and hordes of photos. The favourite game of the day was to peer at fading and torn images trying to spot who was depicted and when it might be. A big surprise was the number of recordings that came to light with just about every kind of media represented; starting with 78rpm vinyl, LP’s, tapes and CD’s. In some instances we were given multiple copies of the same recording. Have a look [here] to see of these ring any bells.

There were people who had made the journey from outside the village, mostly from Swindon, but some for further away and we learned of the value this work could have for interests beyond just banding. One attendee gave us a mass of material he had come across when researching his family history and coincidently had found connections to the Band. In future the reverse might prove valuable to others.

Here are some of the items that came in

Family owned mouthpieces for brass band instruments

Catalogue page of artefacts and documentsCatalog page of band uniforms

As the project progressed an interrim display was created:

First Heritage Project Display April 2013

In the end a video display was created:

People viewing video as part of display

Other things created by the project were an education pack, oral history recordings, and a booklet for villagers, all of these can be accessed here.

In the end a report was produced for the HLF, detailing what was done, we have reproduced it in full below.