Sunday afternoon and our hoped for steady stream of people materialised, offering their photos to be scanned. This further developed our aim of capturing for future generations a captioned archive of photos of the village, villagers and village life from the last century. Much photo sharing, remembering and reminiscing over a drink or two was very evident throughout the whole afternoon, and thus fulfilled our social aims. The very obvious pleasure that so many people gained from browsing around the various artefacts showed us that the hard work we had put into collecting and displaying them was much appreciated and well worthwhile.

For future safekeeping, Hillam Parish Council is entrusting our most precious village archives to the care of the purpose-built archive room in NYCC’s Record Office at Northallerton. There they will still be accessible to visitors, but before we sent them on their way, Hillam Parish Council and Hillam Historians wanted to ensure that any interested parishioners had an opportunity to see them locally.

We were fortunate to have a range of documents loaned by the parish councils of both Hillam and Monk Fryston, the Burial Board and the village school, and also those documents entrusted by villagers past and present to Hillam Historians. We thought that reading details from the school punishment book would be of interest to some older residents and perhaps set their palms tingling once again. Stuart Twidale kindly gave a brief explanation of the role of the Burial Board before showing their historic documents, plans and records.

But without doubt, the star of our collection was the 1811 Hillam Inclosure Award book and map. It is a beautiful handwritten ledger and map, and is still probably the most important comprehensive legal document we have. The land register of its day, it still has legal clout.  To ensure that villagers, now and in the future, did not lose touch with this historic document, Hillam Historians arranged for the map to be scanned and stored and to be periodically available to be reproduced. Hillam PC subsequently purchased a copy on behalf of the community. The Community Association kindly agreed to house it, and it is this real size copy which Hillam PC Chair, Jean Collinson, unveiled for us.

Hillam Historians’ focus for Village Day 2009 was once again a trip down memory lane to celebrate Hillam’s agricultural heritage. Thanks to much hard work by Valerie Richardson and Roy Hill, a wide range of historic agricultural exhibits gathered in the Square, before parading to be displayed on the school field and the Community Association car park. Valerie also arranged for a modern tractor to join the event, to illustrate the changes in machinery and farming practice over the past hundred years.

Our mechanical visitors included Victoria, the magnificent steam traction engine who is now over a hundred years old. Many will remember her previous visit to the village when she came on Pump Day in 2007, to help us celebrate our renovation of the village pump by Roy and his team. As she passed through the village from Hillam Common en route for Monk Fryston, Victoria once more took on water at the village pump.

Throughout the morning, we again had the pump up and running, and encouraged villagers old and young to come and pump the waters. Working village pumps are rare indeed, so many families took the opportunity to step back in time and experience life as it would have been in Hillam before mains water arrived in the 1930s.

The renovation project which brought our village pump back to active use three years ago was finally completed by the restoration of the steps earlier this year. The hard work of the Pump Group resulted in the concrete steps, which date back to the 1960s, being replaced by more authentic York stone steps.

Hillam Historians’ contribution to our Village Day once again focussed upon our agricultural heritage and the village pump. The pump was opened for general use, giving everyone the chance to pump the waters and at the same time admire the Pump Group’s steps restoration project.  Though many of the younger children needed help pumping the waters, they certainly enjoyed dabbling about in the outflow.

The day afforded an outing for our many local vintage tractors, farm implements and agricultural artefacts. The Square was a throng of tractor owners, villagers, vintage vehicle and pump enthusiasts. Visitors enjoyed reminiscing together in the sunshine whilst excited children splashed and played in the pump waters.

At noon the tractors set off to travel down to their afternoon display area on the school fields.  At the school and the nearby Community Centre, there was a huge range of activities, displays and refreshments to entertain and succour the large numbers who attended.

It is now 5 years since the inauguration of Hillam Historians. We decided to celebrate by focusing on the agricultural roots of our village and, in so doing, incorporate one of our major achievements, last year’s renovation of the village pump. We invited Alan Jackson, the current owner of Wallis and Steevens no 2489 Victoria, a 6 nhp traction engine complete with threshing machine, to visit us.

Victoria started life on 12th July 1900, bought new by a Devon farmer. Between 1922 and 1935 she worked on farms in Gloucestershire and Worcestershire until completely worn out. Then she was left in the contractor’s yard. She was rescued for preservation by Richard Rockliff of Stillingfleet who started renovation work, and subsequently acquired by Alan Jackson in 1974. A huge amount of renovation work was still to be done. Despite considerable ongoing mechanical repairs and refurbishment and a catalogue of trials and tribulations along the way, culminating in major boiler work in 1992, Victoria arrived home and was in steam on her 100th birthday.

Such machines would have been in regular use from about 100 years ago to the middle of last century, mainly for threshing. They travelled from farm to farm from harvest time to spring, threshing the corn each farm had grown, reaped and stacked during the previous year. Threshing would usually take two to four days, depending on the size of the crop. As well as the threshing contractor’s driver and mate, up to a dozen farm labourers would also be involved. The village pump was the main water source for these thirsty machines.

Threshing and similar machines are part and parcel of the life experience of many older villagers and ex-villagers. Indeed, merely seeing pictures of the engine has already sparked much debate and reminiscence.

We hope that villagers and former villagers enjoyed a trip down memory lane on the afternoon of Sunday 29th July when Victoria was on show in the village Square.