History Footsteps
The VCH has a dedicated website for schools, History Footsteps (you'll find a link on each page of this site). With this the VCH is journeying beyond its familiar remit and its usual audience in an attempt to bring its unique resources to schools for the first time. The website will be developed over the next few years by a team of staff at the VCH's central office, with materials provided by staff and volunteers in the counties.
Why History Footsteps?
We like to think of those who use the site, not only tracing tracing a path back through time, but also walking in the footsteps of their ancestors round their local area.
Follow the Footsteps banner on our web pages to find local history materials that will help you do this.
How History Footsteps started
Pilot projects, funded by the Victoria History Trust, were been undertaken in three areas of the country, Codford in Wiltshire, Warter in the East Riding of Yorkshire and the city of Bristol in 2002-3. Diverse in character, they posed the problem of how to design, create and maintain a website which would draw together very different themes and presentations under the Footsteps mantle.
You can see the results the www.historyfootsteps.net website.
Who took part? Specialist educationalists and academics collaborated with VCH county staff and our IT specialist on all three projects.
The three projects were authored in very different ways.
Travelling through Codford was written by John Chandler, a local historian, educational consultant and publisher, who was assisted in his research by Carrie Smith of VCH Wiltshire.
The Bristol Slavery Trail was based on the 1998 version of a The Slave Trade Trail Around Central Bristol, written by Madge Dresser (University of the West of England), Caletta Jordan and Doreen Taylor, commissioned by the Bristol City Museum and Art Gallery and published by Bristol City Council.
The website project includes additional material from Madge Dresser's book Slavery Obscured: the social history of the slave trade in an English provincial port (London: Continuum, 2001) and original lesson plans devised by Dean Smart and Penelope Harnett of UWE.
Warter: Living in an Estate Village was entirely written and illustrated by VCH Staff, David and Susan Neave of VCH Yorkshire East Riding, both of whom are experienced in preparing educational materials and working with local communities.
