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Ryde's Heritage - Our Town, Your Histories
Location: Isle of Wight
“Ryde’s Heritage… our town, your histories” will widen the appreciation of local history, and support people in learning about Ryde’s past, by developing a dynamic database driven website, and creating and distributing printed information for schools in the Ryde Cluster, aiding personal research, and providing a written resource about the cemetery.
Ryde Cemetery, like many others across the country, provides a rich source of social history and is one of the important starting points when researching local people, events and social development within the area. The Cemetery holds the key to nearly all aspects of the town’s development over the last 160 years – founding families, famous and infamous residents, soldiers lost in the many great wars, social figures, and local families still resident today. Preserving this heritage in electronic and printed form will make it more accessible to everyone, and will increase the awareness and understanding of the heritage that is on all our “doorsteps”.
Through the production of information and work sheets, we will engage with children of all ages in the eleven local schools in the Ryde Cluster, and support anyone who wants to know more about Ryde’s past. We will work with local educators and the Local Authority, linking the information to the local interpretation of the National Curriculum, which is studied in local schools. The printed information will be produced in Resource Packs, which will contain worksheets and reference materials aimed at different age groups. An interpretation board on site will inform the casual visitor about the flora, fauna and social history of the cemetery.
Transcribing the fast eroding memorial inscriptions in Ryde Cemetery, researching the social history of those individuals, and recording this information on the website, will preserve and provide accessible information about the people and places of Ryde’s past. Developing the website to include a database will ensure the website is manageable for years to come, for preserving and updating records, and will improve the search facilities for people accessing the site. Producing local history fact sheets and worksheets will support others to learn about their heritage and the town’s development. The fact sheets will cover stories about noteworthy individuals, and provide information on significant families, the development of the cemetery, and the growth of Ryde, showing the association of named individuals to places in the town. Fact sheets will also present information about Victorian funerals, and the sociological changes that occurred in the Victorian era, which brought improved health and housing conditions to the people of Ryde. Another series of fact sheets will relate to the many War and Military Graves in the Cemetery, and the stories associated with medal holders. The work sheets will include “How to find your ancestors in the cemetery”, “How to start researching your family history”, and ”How to decipher and transcribe the memorial inscriptions”. All of this printed information will enable people to understand and appreciate the heritage assets of Ryde. The production of the fact sheets and worksheets will engage others in researching and writing. Presenting and displaying the information, including photographs and artefacts, through the local libraries, special interest groups and exhibitions will ensure that a wider audience can appreciate this legacy.
The website and written information will engage the present inhabitants of the town and Island, helping them to understand their links to the past, and widening their knowledge and value of local heritage. Ryde’s families have descendants in the far-flung reaches of the globe, and through the website, information will be made accessible to a worldwide audience of people who may otherwise not be able to enhance their knowledge of their ancestors, or their interest in Ryde. Without these efforts, the effects of weather erosion, wear and tear, and the encroachment of nature will soon eradicate the wealth of information based in the cemetery, and a valuable and irreplaceable part of Ryde’s heritage will be lost. Since we have started we can trace the effects of this erosion and are concentrating our efforts on recording tombstone data while we can.
The cemetery was developed on ancient fields and meadows, but has not suffered from intensive modern farming practice such as the use of herbicides. The cemetery ground therefore has a unique heritage of plants and animals that find a haven in the urban centre of Ryde. There is a potential for the site to contain BAP species, but no survey has been done to date. We aim to do this survey and publish fact sheets on the flora and fauna of the cemetery.
| Grants: |
Heritage Lottery Fund: £22418
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