We want to involve younger members of the community in the project, so I wrote to the Head of Humanities at our local comprehensive school, because I knew that he was very interested in local history. But although he is fascinated and very supportive personally, he hasn’t actually got the time to get involved.

One of the problems we have with the village school is that there aren’t many children in the villages, so the vast majority of the children who come to Crockerton School don’t actually live in Crockerton or even in the valley. They come from Warminster, which is only two or three miles away, but if the parents have no history of growing up or particularly knowing the valley, they’re not necessarily going to bring the children out on a Sunday for events like pond dipping.

We’re trying to collect memories of the schools on the river. Two of the villages - Kingston Deverill & Longbridge Deverill - have schools that were built actually on the river banks, and although the school log books don’t say much about the river, they are a fascinating record of life in the valley.

Being a retired teacher myself, it’s so wonderful reading the log books written by these teachers of the past. You can almost hear their desperation when the teaching assistants were ill, the head teacher was coping with all the children her own, and something has just got to be done. I recognise the tone!