The WEA and Local History
Audrey Harwood

Did you know that the greatest provider of adult education, after local authority provision, is the Workers Educational Association? The WEA, a countrywide and indeed international organization, was set up in 1903, responding to a surge of demand for adult education at the beginning of the century. Today it runs more than 10,000 courses a year for over 140,000 students and caters for a wide spectrum of educational opportunities. These include workplace and community courses, outreach courses designed for people who have missed out on educational opportunities, and a range of liberal studies courses such as architecture, creative writing, literature, art and musical appreciation, current affairs, history and natural science. This last category is offered chiefly by local branches.

Each branch chooses the subject it is going to study and where local history interests people, the WEA provides for them. Helmdon, a small but lively village in South Northamptonshire, is one such branch, and it has run many ten-week courses on a local history theme. How to Research Family History, Local Crafts and Industries, Parish Churches, Local Architecture, The History of Gardens and The History and Function of Buildings have been among recent subjects chosen by the class.

Some four years ago John Raybould was the tutor for The Changing Village. The course covered the last hundred years and focused on Helmdon. However, John did not use the conventional approach of a lecture interspersed with slides and overhead transparencies. His method was to guide the class to find out about the village for themselves. Each wee, after a critical introduction to the subject, he provided documents, such as census returns, trade directory extracts or newspaper articles, to read and discuss.

His enthusiasm lingered after the course was over, whetting the appetite for further research, and seven participants of the original class formed themselves into a local studies group. The group, now bigger than it was at its outset, is a mixed one in that several members were born and have lived all their lives in Helmdon some have lived in the village for a long time, and one or two are relatively new to the village. As local historians, we are all amateurs, some with less experience than others, but we all aid one another; sharing 'history on the ground' is a great way to learn and increase skills.

From the beginning we felt that what was researched should be recorded in some way, and meetings were held every three months or so to record progress and pool information. We made the first of many trips to local record offices and we have worked on archives at Magdalen and Worcester Colleges, Oxford, which had owned land in Helmdon until the beginning of this century.

But in many ways the research proved to be the easy bit. It was the production of the booklet that caused a few difficulties. However, when we finished out first booklet Aspects of Helmdon 1, fifty pages of what we trust is an informative and interesting text, a major ambition had been fulfilled. Aspects of Helmdon 2 was easier to produce as our word processing skills improved as we pushed on with further work.

Up to the present we have not felt the need to have an editor; all problems are sorted out by consensus. We now have a profit from our publishing effort, but to anyone who is considering following in our footsteps I suppose that the initial plunge was the hardest.

Our village is small, with about three hundred households, and realistically, now everyone is interested enough in local history to buy a booklet. However, when we sought quotations form the printer, 300 copies seemed the most economical print run. Realising that we would at least sell some copies, the six contributors to the first issue agreed to cover the printer's bill if it did not sell well, but in the event family history researchers also found the publication of worth and the group's pledges were not called upon.

Aspects of Helmdon 1 containing as it does, to quote Jeremy Gibson reviewing the booklet in Cake and Cockhorse (the journal of the Banbury Historical Society), an 'impressive analysis of the census records', is sold out but can be borrowed from libraries or seen at the Northamptonshire Record Office. Aspects of Helmdon 2, reviewed in this magazine is doing very well and we hope to publish Aspects 3 before the end of 1000, which is the fortieth anniversary of the branch. Apart from having some tremendous fun we have recorded some reminiscences before they a re lost to memory, and best of all, we have put into print some of Helmdon's history to help in the understanding of this small community as it has grown up in rural South Northamptonshire.

The address for the WEA is Temple House, 17 Victoria Park Square, London E29 9PB or telephone 0181 9831515 to find out your nearest branch.

From: Local History Magazine No. 73 May/June 1999