Category: Publications

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PVHG Book Launch and Signing – Saturday 30th November 2024 – 10am to 1pm at Memorial Hall Meeting Room

Our Packington Village History Group PVHG is to publish a new book, about life more than a whole century ago, right here in our village.

The new book is to be launched on Saturday 30th November 2024, at the Memorial Hall meeting room, from 10 am to 1 pm.

PVHG chair and editor Robin Boucher will personally sign first-day copies there. DO come and get YOURS!

Synopsis

It is the year 1900. A young Packington man observes village life.  He is “very fond of scribbling”.  He writes in an endearingly fluent hand of significant changes around him during his twenty-five years of life so far.

Soon, in 1901, two more stark changes. Early in the year after 63 years on the throne, the great Queen and Empress will die. The whole country is bereft.  Then, just prior to Christmas that year, a leading light of the village, the revered church vicar, will die suddenly.  The whole community is bereft. 

Changing Scenes indeed.  Thomas OAKEY writes again about his changed village and church life.

After a few more years, a third essay relates yet more changes under way.   

Latent till now in the archive of Packington Village History Group PVHG, his three handwritten manuscripts are reproduced here for YOU. 

Thomas gives us a unique insight into village life.  As he describes ordinary village folk reacting to change, we gain an endearing glimpse into our village and our country at the dawn of the twentieth century.

“Changing Scenes” indeed !

The book will be launched on Saturday, 30th Novemberm, and editor Robin Boucher, chair of PVHG, will be at the launch to sign YOUR first-day cover of the book.

Only 100 copies have been printed – this is YOUR opportunity to own this heart-warming treasure for an investment of just £5.

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Book Launch success – Saturday 4th December 2021

The PVHG Book-Launch and Signing took place on Saturday 4th December 2021 at the Hall meeting room. An early purchaser, village resident Colin Goacher, is seen above outside Memorial Hall holding his signed first-day cover of the PVHG book “A Way of Life That has Gone“.

PVHG Chair Robin Boucher, seen below, who had himself painstakingly edited the original source interviews – from villagers of two decades ago, discussing their memories of eight to ten decades ago – was signing launch copies of the book in the Meeting Room.

Front cover – “A Way of Life That has Gone”

Copies of the book are available for purchase at £5 – contact Robin Boucher by email to randbboucher at googlemail dot com, or by telephone on 411638. They will also be available:

  • at the PVHG meeting on 25th January 2022
  • at subsequent 4th Tuesday PVHG meetings
  • at the June Platinum Jubilee display by PVHG during the anticipated Sunday 5th June Strawberry cream tea at the Hall.
The rear cover of “A Way of Life That has Gone”
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Book Launch and Signing – Saturday 4th December 2021 – 10 am to 1 pm at Memorial Hall

Our Packington Village History Group PVHG is to publish a new book about life in the inter-war years in our village. The new book is to be launched on Saturday 4th December 2021, at the Memorial Hall meeting room, from 10 am to 1 pm.

Verbal testimony, some of it a whole century old, was recorded in the last century by PVHG, from reminiscences of still-living members of the village. Their vivid recollections form our new PVHG book, “A Way of Life that is Gone“.

The book will be launched on Saturday, and editor Robn Boucher, chair of PVHG, will be at the launch to sign YOUR first-day cover of the book.

Only 100 copies have been printed – this is YOUR opportunity to own this heart-warming treasure for an investment of just £5.

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A VITAL STORY to be told – YOURS

Write YOUR Life Story.. for future Packington Residents to read – and to be amazed..?

In March 2020, while confined to his home in our village, Adrian Mongredien writes:

At Hay Literary Festival, I heard a historian talk on how to write the story of our lives.

She told us that nothing is more valuable to historians than first hand experiences. The only way these can be discovered and cross-checked is if a number of people can be persuaded to write about their own individual experiences.

In the next few years the number of people who can remember living just after or through the Second World War will rapidly diminish. Every one of us has a unique story to tell. Events that we may see as mundane and ordinary may be fascinating to our great grandchildren. Consider – if you are over 70, then:

  • you probably grew up in a house with no central heating;
  • with coal fires which you were taught how to light and keep going.
  • you may remember what life was like before television.
  • you may have had no shower, but one bath a week if there was enough hot water.

How can we write our own life story? A good way to start is to find your birth certificate. In my case I was able to find, from mine, the building that I was born in on google maps – a nursing home in Weston Favell Northamptonshire in 1942- and discover that it is still there although it is now an old people’s home. Can you remember

  • the house, or area, in which you were born?
  • Where you first went to school?
  • How near were you to your local shops?
  • Was food and sweets rationed?
  • How many people lived there in the city, town, or village where you lived as a child?
  • Where was the nearest Park?
  • What sort of games did you play with other children living on your street?
  • Did you have a birthday party when you were a child?
  • What sort of presents did you receive at Christmas?
  • What was your favourite radio programme?
  • How many times did you go to the cinema every month?

Answers to all these questions will be of interest to future generations who will almost certainly be living very different lifestyles, as indeed are we today already.

I started writing the story of my early life a couple of years ago. Along the way I have found myself searching the internet for photos of New Brighton Pier (now demolished) and my secondary school (also demolished), and recently discovering on the net, the value of the house where I lived in a bedsit for ten months, during my few years in London in the “swinging sixties”. I was amazed to discover that it sold a couple of years ago for over £27,000,000. That is twenty seven million!!

You have no idea what will turn up until you sit down at your lap top and begin to remember your beginnings.

Over two decades ago, our Village History Group produced some fascinating reminiscences in the form of this “Where were you in the War?” booklet. Please will you NOW help us write YOUR history, for future village residents to enjoy? PVHG hope to publish YOUR story in a similar booklet when our current enforced home isolation comes to an end ..

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PVHG Publishes new Packington History Booklet – “Gems from the Gilwiskaw”

Packington Village History Group PVHG is delighted to welcome publication of “Gems from the Gilwiskaw”, which author Laura Cooper completed shortly before her death.

“Gems” represents a lasting tribute to Laura’s participation in Packington life, and illustrates her commitment to recording the village’s history.

Laura was born in Packington in 1931, but lived for her first four years in Ravenstone. (Laura said that her parents decided to move back to Packington so that she could attend the Packington School). She remained in Packington for the rest of her life.

In “Gems” she paints vivid pictures from her childhood in the village (and Ravenstone) in the 1930’s and 40’s. Laura completed the manuscript shortly before her death in 2016.

Copies are available from:

  • Robin Boucher tel 411638 email: randbboucher@googlemail.com
  • Yvonne Eaton tel 412269 email: yvonne.eat@outlook.com
  • at a cost of £3.50 each copy
Robin Boucher
Packington Village History Group 
August 2019