Help us solve the puzzle of the Tressell’s children

Hastings has a rich, colourful and fascinating history. In the 1980s a group of local people recorded their memories of growing up between the two World Wars. These tapes have lain dormant in the local archives… Until now! We are asking local residents to turn detective and help us find out more about the stories told by the people who took part in the oral history project. Kate Hodges writes.

Researcher and historian Catherine Hirst will lead a series of three workshops; one online, one at Hastings Library and one at Hastings Museum (see below for more details). We’ll look at transcripts of the recordings and then try to find out more about the people who made them. Participants will find out how to rummage through the town’s archives, trawl online ancestry resources and discover how to effectively research local history.

Along the way, we’ll find photographs, pictures and newspaper articles. We might even track down and speak to the storytellers’ children and grandchildren to help us write mini biographies. The research will be shown in a new exhibition at St Andrews Mews that will be held during Hastings’ Coastal Currents festival in September.

The workshops are part of the Tressell’s Children project, a groundbreaking series of events, that aims to create a digital archive and real-world exhibition inspired by working-class culture in Hastings and Medway.

Supported by the National Lottery Heritage Fund the project is inspired by Robert Tressell’s groundbreaking 1914 book, The Ragged Trousered Philanthropists, which drew upon Tressell’s life as a painter and decorator in Hastings. Tressell’s ‘Children’ are the participants in the oral history project.

The oral histories that our workshop participants will work with are one of a number of culturally important oral history projects addressing political and social health, disability, ethnicity and immigration issues which were conducted up to and around the turn of the 21st century.

Among these, the Millennium Memory Bank and the BBC’s Listening Project which, being digitally archived, formed an invaluable resource for future generations. The Hastings oral history project is available on cassette tapes in the East Sussex Record Office and typewritten transcripts in Hastings Library but as it is not digitised it is virtually unknown and little accessed. We want to highlight the stories of the people on the tapes before they are lost forever.

This project builds on the momentum of MSL’s previous work before and during the pandemic, using archives as a springboard for new creative work, and harnessing the skills of local researchers and creative practitioners.

MSL is committed to revealing the intangible heritage of place. Our starting points are the hidden, lost or threatened narratives that help to make up the identity of each area.

Workshop leader Catherine Hirst is a museum and arts professional with thirty years’ experience of collections, engagement, and arts management. Local history exhibitions have included Mugsborough (Tressell’s Hastings), a First World War centenary programme, and the redisplay of local history collections at Hastings Museum & Art Gallery.

The workshops will run as follows:

Online session via Zoom: Monday 7 August , 6pm – 7pm

An introduction to the project. Find out how to research local history and learn why ordinary histories are so important.

Session at Hastings Library: Thursday 10 August, 2pm – 4pm

Participants will explore online resources including ancestry.com to look for descendants and other archive material.

Hastings Museum & Art Gallery: Saturday 12 August, 10am – 12pm,
A two-hour session at Hastings Museum & Art Gallery in the Local Studies room. Volunteers will work with Catherine to unearth records, photographs and archives.

Tressell Exhibition
The material will be included in the Tressell’s Children exhibition, held at St Andrews Mews during the Coastal Currents festival. It will be open 1-3 and 9/10 September. For exhibition opening times check MSL’s website and social media pages.

Find more online at MSL Projects.
At our Facebook page facebook.com/mslhastings
Or Instagram @msl_hastings

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