I can re-build your website using WordPress and should be able to get pretty much the same look and feel. I estimate the cost of this to be no more than £500.00; because of the way WordPress works, once that’s done I can simply give you log-in details and you can update the site yourself from any web browser – or you can turn to one of the many thousands of WordPress developers to help you out. At the same time we’d move the site to a new hosting company and going forward they’d look after your hosting and support. If we do this before your current hosting agreement runs out on May 11th there’d be no charge for making the move – apart from the cost of the hosting.
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Dora Research revealed
Thanks to the amazing Gardens Trust a summary of my four year research surrounding botanist and mountain climber Miss Stafford can be found at their new history hub.
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Voices from the Box
As a researcher I sometimes get ambushed by voices from the past. This happened to me on my visit to the Mass Observation papers at the Keep archive in Sussex. This is part of research for an exhibition for the Royal College of Physicians. Thanks to anonymous observers I heard 1940s vocal working-class opinions about the dreaded panel doctors contrasting with medics feeling threatened by talk of the NHS steaming its way through parliament despite being in the middle of a War. All from a card box crammed with handwritten and typed papers from 83 years ago…
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Say Hello 26, Wave Goodbye 25
That was a bizarre year from a work point of view. For the first 8 months no work, except being ghosted several times by potential heritage employers (this is the state of empathy-less HR, such a big problem). To keep my moral up I discovered swimming. I also dabbled in creative writing and found I had a thing for inventing comedy dialogue and veering into fantasy. And my hobby research, into Miss Stafford of Peru, helped keep my archive research and presentation skills active.
Surprise in August (usually a dead work period) came flying in an offer for temp work for Cranleigh Cottage Hospital heritage project, followed by the job offer from Royal College of Physicians. Now I am dipping into fascinating hidden medical history with yet more archive visits. And I also rediscovered my local beach which is best to visit when its cold and windswept to clear the cobwebs (see above). To sum up dear reader, as John McClane shouted many times: “YIPPEE-KI-YAY, motherf*****s!” 🙂
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Our Cottage In the Middle of the Street
After over 2 years’ worth of networking, negotiating, drafting, meetings, banging of heads the refurb for the Cranleigh Cottage Hospital has started. This was the UKs first ever cottage hospital pioneered by Doctor Napper. All thanks to a large Lottery Heritage grant. I am going into volunteer coordinator mode this month to help new researchers. Meanwhile…I might have another part-time job….
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Wood and Tin
New experiment in my face-to-face talks. Using props like these two. A modern plywood plant press and a late Victorian tinplate vasculum (which I did a bit of paint DIY during the hot summer). The best bit is to allow the audience to feel these objects to understand what a planthunter carried or their local guides carried.
Following a question in my last Open Heritage Day event I am now investigating the clothes worn by the extreme female mountaineers of the 1930s who climbed more than 15,000 feet…