| Status: | Active, not currently accepting new members |
| When: | On Thursday afternoons 2:00 pm 1st Thursday of each month |
| Venue: | Member's home |
This group was one of the very first to form in Brightlingsea in 2005. The aim was to meet with older people in the town to gather their personal memories and stories of growing up, living and working in the town. Group members met with people individually and in social gatherings and contacts snowballed. Gradually the group assembled a lot of material from people who were encouraging and seemed to enjoy sharing memories, looking out scrapbooks, finding photographs and generally taking a trip down memory lane. To do justice to the contributors the group decided to write up the stories and has now published 11 booklets in the ‘Brightlingsea Heritage Series’. Titles include ‘Toy Trumpet Workshops’, ‘The Small Boat Builders of Brightlingsea’, ‘The Lady Wood Carvers’, ‘The YMCA in Brightlingsea’, ‘The Story of an Unusual Beach Hut’ ‘Brightlingsea: Memories of Childhood in the 1930’s and 1940’s’. and most recently, ‘The Pubs of Brightlingsea: Past and Present’.
The group has two main projects underway at the moment. The first is a new booklet on the history of shops and shopping in Brightlingsea. As in many such small towns shops have changed over the years with some disappearing to become houses. We intend to look at how shops have changed, developed or gone.
Some of the lost shops can be seen in the gallery opposite.
Our other project is to produce talking book versions of some of our titles. Early days on this but progress will be reported on this page.
The group has strong links with the Museum and a link to the museum website can be found at here. https://www.brightlingseamuseum.co.uk/
Some of the front covers of our booklets can be seen below and all of them are available to buy from Brightlingsea museum.
