Hillam Historians Archive Social
Sunday 18th May 2008

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.