Oral History Project

This three-year Heritage Lottery Fund Oral History Project, which began early in 2001 was successfully completed in March 2004. Carmela Semeraro, project officer, completed over 260 tape-recorded interviews with a range of men and women who have lived and worked in the rural area between Bedford and the M1, Cranfield and Willington.

The aim of this project was to create an Oral History Archive that shows, through the voices of individuals who have lived and worked in this area over the last one hundred years, how life and the physical environment have changed. Brickmaking, farming and local village economies have all changed enormously and with them the lives of communities, families and individuals.

Each of the interviews cover a wide range of topics relating to individual life experiences, as well as the developments within agriculture, horticulture, village life, and the expansion, consolidation and contraction within the brickmaking industry through the twentieth century. Topics raised include childhood, home, family life, schooling, adolescence, courting, wartime experience, immigration, work experiences, further education, social life and changing attitudes, religious belief and church and chapel-going, housing, shopping, leisure pursuits and entertainment, married life, redundancy and retirement, and old age.

The largest subject dealt with is, not surprisingly, the brick industry, since London Brick Company became the largest brick works in the world. Interviews have been conducted with a large range of workers from labourers and immigrant workers, through the various specialist craft workers to supervisors, office staff, catering staff, transport managers and drivers, scientists, and managing directors.

Farming and market gardening are also covered extensively, charting the ups and downs of the industries, increasing mechanisation, reduction in the labour force and changing market conditions. Village life and the changes which have occurred from Victorian times to the present are viewed from the perspective of individuals who experienced them, or heard their parents or grandparents talk about them. Aspects of rural life and the countryside which have long disappeared are touched on, as are social attitudes and behaviour reflecting the age in which they lived. Interviewees have ranged in age from centenarians, to those born in the 1950s. Public debate issues such as pollution and the threat to the countryside, land filling, disappearing village facilities and housing development are all aired in the interviews, revealing a wide range of attitudes and perspectives.

These tape-recordings and transcriptions, with written summaries of each interview, plus associated photographs, are available to the public, by prior arrangement with the Forest Centre, Marston Moretaine. They are also available at  Bedfordshire and Luton Archives and Records Service based at The Riverside building, Borough Hall, Bedford. Some extracts from interviews can also be viewed and heard on our website www.marstonvale.org/oralhistory and on the BBC web pages www.bbc.co.uk/legacies

Carmela Semeraro would like to thank all the participants and also all the volunteers who have helped enormously by typing up the transcriptions. Without their effort this project would not have been such a great success. Each interview has been summarised by Stuart Antrobus.