Community project in Falkirk

Posted on October 23, 2014

I have had the pleasure of working with a fantastic group of volunteers at Callendar House with Falkirk Community Trust’s learning team over the past few weeks. Their ‘Our Area in the First World War’ project is funded by HLF and is an extension of the award winning work we did with Laurieston Primary earlier in the year. The groups’ memory boxes will be on display at the wonderful Bo’ness Hippodrome on November 18th before touring schools and libraries. Mixing words and art to interpret their research findings the first session involved ‘The Last Word’ game. The local stories that are emerging are really wonderful, we have two especially colourful characters in Mr Sam Cook who kept the area of Denny going single handed  and Miss Barbara Rickard who was the first female ‘Postie’ in Great Britain. With the closure of the Firth of Forth to traffic getting coal to the fleet in Scapa Flow was also a challenge! Meanwhile the archive have found some amazing material on Falkirk Iron Works and the young women who worked there making Mills Bombs. Other areas of research include the troop hospitals, fund raising and food rationing in the area.

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