Donate your time, add to history

There are a number of ways that you can make a difference by becoming a volunteer.

As a volunteer, you have opportunities to meet new people and possibly make friends with people you may not have met otherwise.

Volunteering can provide stimulating challenges that can help you learn new skills in order to strengthen your skill set.

It’s very helpful to know how much time you think you can commit. It’s an indication only. A trustee will always meet with a new volunteer to find out how they want to help and to jointly agree what will be done going forward.

There are two main areas where you can help by researching and writing and then there’s helping with publication, these are:

• Researching and writing about places

• Researching and writing about people

• Helping with publication

Part of Prior to Now’s remit is to understand how and when the area developed.

We have a range of places we want to understand in more detail.

Part of Prior to Now’s remit is to understand who lived here, what they did and how they made an impact on the area or more widely.

We have a a number of people we want to understand in more detail.

• ‘Footprint’ development of area since Domesday.
• Finding and researching availability of estate agents’ archives., housing and property deeds., old church magazines and similar
• Horsecombe Vale ski slope rejection 1990s.
• Identifying and researching famous or notable people who lived in the area
• Long term businesses – Cross, Mannings.
• More guest articles – families, places, businesses, memoirs, memories, university theses

• Prior Park ‘bankruptcy’ & rescue 1990s.
• Researching British Newspaper archive for people and events
• Research social media comments for article ideas
• Travellers’ encampment Freefields 1990s.
• Warriors / Fallen in other conflicts than WW1/2, plus women not yet mentioned at all.
• Ancestry and family maze
  • Reviewing hints for inclusion
  • 1921 census when available
  • Finding links for families not yet in the maze

Part of Prior to Now’s remit is to understand edit and publish the results of our research.

There’s always a lot to be done in both maintaining and developing information for our audience.

• Collate and geocode Combe Down area images database
• Scan and database Combe Down, Monkton Combe, Midford pages in Bath and Kelly directories at BRE
• Change to automatically generate footnotes.
• Add photo gallery to each section, e. g. Church Road, de Montalt Mill etc.
• Complete pub landlords, add KWMC, Boatman’s Arms, Fox, Hope & Anchor.
• Maintain social media on Facebook, Instagram, Threads, X
• Develop technical architecture for vision of a virtual village
• Helping to find Friends and Patrons
• Helping to find sponsors
• Edit and publish articles from places, people and events to website
• Maintain website