HISTORY: Area's recent history revived
4:35pm Friday 3rd June 2011 in In Focus By Clare Hardy
John Hunter, who took part in the 1986 Domesday project
A WINDOW into the area's recent history has been opened up with the revival of a 25-year-old project.
The BBC's Domesday Reloaded project is the result of years of work to transfer the record of everyday life made by people across the country in 1986 from obsolete technology to the internet.
The project was aimed at mirroring the original Domesday Book created by William the Conqueror in 1086, which recorded land and livestock ownership.
But the video discs which the information was stored on – Laserdiscs – were so expensive to run, needing a BBC Master computer and special software, that they were soon obsolete.
After painstaking work to convert the thousands of pages of information, the project is now online and people can search for information about their neighbourhood.
The articles include a visit to Waltham Abbey estate agents' Chetwoods, where pupils from Holy Cross Primary School were told that the average house price was £45,000 and a description of children's games played in Walthamstow.
Sara Pitt was one of the children from St John's Primary School in Buckhust Hill to write about the village for the project, shortly before she went on to study at Bancroft's School in Woodford Green.
Now 37 and living in Surrey with her husband and three children, she said she remembered taking part in the project.
“We had to fill in a survey, with questions on our brothers and sisters and that sort of thing,” she said. “We were trying to emulate the old Domesday Book.
“My parents never moved out of Buckhurst Hill and live in Oaklands Place now. I've been visiting them for half-term.”
As a schoolgirl, she asked questions about the holiday habits of Buckhurst Hill residents, interviewing people outside Chigwell station.
Her classmates spoke to Cannon John Hunter, the rector of St John's Church at the time.
The entry on him includes details of his day-to-day life, including his 8.15am start and the prayers he said for each road in the neighbourhood.
The 90-year-old moved to Bradford in 1989, but said he still keeps in touch with his former parishioners, who plan to help him celebrate the 60th anniversary of his ordination later this year.
“Buckhurst Hill was my last big parish job,” he said. “It was a very exciting job and I had a very good lay team of people to work with, who reached out into the community.”
He said the Domesday project seemed very imaginative at the time.
“Of course, the Domesday Book itself was of such significance in the life of a nation that to try and recapture something of it in modern times struck me as a good idea,” he added.
To search for a snapshot of your neighbourhood, visit www.bbc.co.uk/history/domesday
What they said about us:
The Guardian's predecessor, the West Essex Gazette, is mentioned in the Loughton section of the project. This is what was written:
"The Gazette is a popular local newspaper, and has around fifty thousand readers in the Loughton area.
"The Gazette has over one-hundred stories each week.
"The most exciting story over the past year was a lady giving birth in a Mini.
"To be a reporter you need two A-levels. You also have to learn a law-book.
"Three reporters cover the area of, Loughton,Buckhurst Hill and Chigwell.
"Sometimes they have too much news to print in the paper. To print with they use a machine called a Lithographic.
"Nearly every week they have about one complaint (normally over a printing error).
"The reporter we talked to found it a very interesting job.
"Generally the paper is read so that people know what is going on in the area, or they buy it if someone they know is mentioned in the news."
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