Live Project 2008 -2009
Sept 2009
Oral History Project Latest News
Join us for a Book Launch!
Rivers Nursery of Sawbridgeworth: The Art of Practical Pomology
by Elizabeth Waugh
The Rivers Oral History Project culminates with the publication of a book about Rivers Nursery and its heritage, incorporating first-hand knowledge from those interviewed for the project.
Saturday, Oct. 17th 2009, 1pm
preceding
Apple Day at Church House 1.30 - 4pm - Sawbridgeworth (see our Map page for location details)
An opportunity to take part in apple day activities and to enjoy tasting and purchasing delicious organic apples picked on Community Apple picking day, Sunday 4th October, in Rivers Nursery Orchard
Further details from Kate Yarnold 07887763258
Download your book order form here
Oral History Project
First announcement:
The Rivers Nursery Site and Orchard Group has been given a grant for the year to come by Awards for All to carry out an oral history project.
This will be launched at their annual Apple Day Saturday Oct 18th 2008 at 1.30 Church House Sawbridgeworth.
The project will focus on two main activities:
1 - Gathering as oral history the voices of those who had contact with the historic Rivers Nursery business, closing in 1987, We hope to involve young people from local primary and high schools (see letter below) to work with adult interviewers and to save the interviews as CD disks in our Archives, accessible to all.
2 - Publishing edited oral history within the context of background from the Archives and other material as a book on the history of the Rivers Nursery. If you have Rivers stories, information, or catalogues and materials to share, please get in touch with Archivist Elizabeth Waugh, on 01279 320099 or by email rnsog@hotmail.com
The project has fallen into 3 phases:
Preparation:
From before we received the grant, we began to gather information: from a course at the British Library on methods and equipment, from the schools on whether any interest in being involved would be shown and most of all, from all previous sources and from publicity, leads on people who have memories or stories. This process led to many direct contacts and possible searches, all of which had to be followed up.
Recording interviews and involving schools:
This phase is well underway and much of this work has been completed, with involvement from two out of four local primary schools and the high school, and about 15 interviews completed so far. A great effort has been made to have a variety of voices as interviewers and with the voices of the storytellers the recordings make a picture of our local community. People have been generous too in sharing written memories and pictures from the past.
Gathering material, writing and publishing:
This last phase is gathering impetus and we expect a book to be published in the autumn.
It’s all of great interest and historical significance - and a lot of work!
The first chance for the public to hear the interviews was at our May Fayre exhibit, Church House,
Sawbridgeworth, May 3, 2009.
Involving the schools:
Dear Head teacher,
The group trying to preserve Rivers Nursery Orchard, the Rivers Nursery Site and Orchard group, has been given an award by the Lottery Fund to carry an oral history project. The aim of this project is to capture the voices of those in our community who had special connections with the business that was a major force here from its beginnings in 1725 to its ending in 1987. The people who worked for Rivers Nursery or who traded with it, who have its trees in their gardens or orchards are becoming fewer. Now is the time to put down their memories, especially since the site is under threat of development.
We would like to involve schools and students. We could work with your school in such a way as to enable some of your curriculum targets to be achieved. Examples of activity that we could assist with might be:
Developing knowledge of interviewing skills - learning how to seek information from others including older people or be interviewed - and seeing current best recording equipment in action;
For a few older students, taking part in an interview carried out by one of the RNSOG members;
Getting to know the community layout and history better, by visiting the Orchard, by hearing a talk about its history, by mapping the places in the area that used to be orchards and are now built over (the many names of streets and areas of Sawbridgeworth referring to orchards indicate that);
Helping mount an exhibition in your school that would show the students’ participation in this project, where recordings of interviews made with the participation of students could be played;
Listening in class to interviews involving your students and summarizing what has been main points;
Developing other ideas which fit into your work in the classroom.
Students would learn some real-life and study skills to be applied in many situations but would also be helping to preserve history as well as to make it. This work would need to take place between now and Easter.
With all best wishes,
Elizabeth Waugh, Archivist for the Rivers Nursery Orchard
Past Project
Celebrating Rivers Nursery Orchard: A Year of Verse and Music 2002 - 2003
Project Activity:
Nine poets are specially commissioned for the Project.
The children at Sawbridgeworth’s two primary schools, Reedings and Mandeville, are involved.
A poetry competition is launched on the theme of fruit and orchards which, thanks to our web page, draws entries from all over the country and from Australia, France and Italy.
The commissioned poetry is linked with other arts. Music is commissioned for three poems; a group designs an installation in the Orchard using fruit as material; an anthology of the verse is produced with a cover design depicting two of the major fruits developed by the Rivers fruit breeders.
The East Herts and West Essex Guild of Spinners, Weavers and Dyers begin the process of weaving a tapestry, with fleece dyed by natural sources – bark, fruit, fungi and flowers – from the Orchard with the dye colour set by wood ash from the Wassail bonfire. This tapestry, like the verse anthology, will be an enduring outcome of the Arts Project.
The poems and music are placed as performances within the cycle of the growing year– the October harvest festival, Apple Day, held in Church House, Sawbridgeworth; the January Wassail event in the Orchard; the May Fair blossom time festival on the Fair Green in Sawbridgeworth; the Summer Concert at Audley End, Saffron Walden, where a glasshouse to the 1856 design of Thomas Rivers has been constructed.