While I was working for the council, the lace mill in Chard was becoming quite derelict, with a tree growing out of its chimney. It was a listed building, and they had to do something to regenerate the area. And they had this brilliant idea of putting the Area West council offices in the old lace mill. So the building was done up, and now it’s a very pleasant place to work, a nice building with a lot of character to it.

People are drawn to the building and want to know about it. After all, it’s really quite strange to find a huge five-storey mill that looks as though it belongs in the West Riding of Yorkshire in the middle of a market town in Somerset.

When we moved in, I organised quite a big opening day. We knew people would want a guided tour, so I met up with a couple of local historians to get the information and then it just snowballed from there. Everyone seemed to know someone who had worked there, or had some connection. So every Wednesday for about the first year, I was taking about 20 people round, and I was always asking them questions and they would come back and tell me a bit more.

Every little snippet they told me I wrote down - but not in any comprehensive order. Then about six years on I was giving a tour to a lady called Jill who was a writer, and she said we really must get all this information written down. So I worked with her, we went through everything I’d got and decided that the best thing to do was to write a booklet of everything that I knew about the lace mill, which I’ve done.

There are three other people on the project team: two of South Somerset District Council’s community and arts workers; and the vice chairman of Chard 2000, a civic group that already existed in the town.

It’s wonderful to be able to work with a team. No-one is employed specifically to do the job, and we do put a lot of extra hours in. We wanted a project that would involve all aspects of the community, and the LHI provided the funding for us to do exactly that. And it was good to know that if we needed help or advice, the LHI team was there for us.

We looked at all we knew about the history of Chard and decided that the 1840s was such an incredible time, with so much going on in the town. There was a canal being built, a railway, the lace “riots”, hundreds of people were coming into the town for work, the workhouse was being built. That’s when we came up with the idea of a guided walk based on the lace riots.