The group meet on Mondays at the Community Centre, Main Street from 10am to 1200. Evening sessions planned to commence but this has still to get off the ground.
They boast having a multi media archive in excess of 6,700 photographs and documents (April, 2015). The archive also contains contemporary photos which will become tomorrows history in the community computer.
They also have a physical archive (album to you) of the same, available for viewing.
So……. they are looking to extend the archive and inviting YOU to contribute if you have anything of interest, or if you would like to view, then call in at the above times, visitors are invited to browse the archive and will be able to search for people by name and more importantly made welcome. Material is scanned and recorded and then returned to the contributor or it can be retained for the collection.
Attached is a photograph of the Community Archive group (October 2008). Standing left to right are :- Cath Ellis, Jennifer Borley, Graham Waite, Glenys Worrilow, Brian Townend, May Walker and Nick Croxall. Seated are June Panton and Vera Garland. The archive is well worth seeing and under continuous development, I hope lots of young people go to view the archive – to quote the foreword in Jim Melvins book “It is tremendously important and provides not only a sense of pride in our heritage, but also helps to stimulate our sense of belonging and the value of tradition”.
On Monday 18th November (2002) our group of intrepid archivists went down to the capital city, to the British Museum no less, for the launch of a National Community web site by TV personality Bamber Gascoigne. The site (total site 11/02) has in excess of 20,000 items of which 2,000 items were a significant part of the Methley Archive Record. Congratulations to them all – but they haven’t finished collecting yet! They continue to invite you to the weekly archive meeting at the Community Centre to both view and to contribute additional photographs/records.
They have now progressed to displays of the collections at village functions in addition to a programme of invited speakers on subjects in common the aims of the archive. Magic for those who do not have access to a computer and absorbing for all.
To navigate the commanet site click on search
double click on change to another archive
double click the required search categories
At the selected subject click the first picture and use the
forward arrow to advance
Beware – the link (hand symbol) does not appear on these two instructions.
Sadly the Commanet site is no more and the Group are working desperately to produce their own web site which is partly in a published state. Navigate to
www.methleyarchive.org/ On display at this site is the collection of photographs and narrative of the village produced by Walter and Nellie Minett.