Our Story

River Wye Carnival
Maiden voyage: Sisters Jan and Barbara Preedy with nieces Christine, Kim and Debbie, row to shore in Hunderton.

Recording Herefordshire since 1989

Long before digital recording, podcasts and smartphones made capturing everyday voices commonplace, Herefordshire Lore was sitting down with local people and asking them to tell their stories. It embraced oral history long before it became a heritage tool and was pioneering in doing so.

Sustainable

We’re a voluntary group and we’ve been collecting, recording and publishing people’s memories since 1989. Herefordshire Lore was started by writer Bill Laws and story-teller Lenny Alsop with support from two Herefordshire arts officers, Veronica Jamset and Natalia Silver. Since then over 150 people have been recorded – half a million words of oral history, which are currently being archived and will be stored for posterity at Herefordshire’s Archive and Records Centre.

Creative

In projects like ‘River Voices’, ‘Weeping Poppies‘, ‘Home Made – Home Grown‘ and ‘Butchers, Bakers, Cider Makers‘, we interview ordinary, working people: munitioneers, housewives, farmers, railway men, domestics, butchers, shop keepers, publicans, cattle dealers, auctioneers and many more. We have interviewed hundreds of people and talked to over 50 local groups, published books, booklets and a decade of Age to Age before launching In Our Age.

Responsible

When we find funding, our team records people, one-to-one, transcribes the recording, and lodges the master copies with Herefordshire Archive and Records Centre (HARC). Projects are monitored by a group of older people. We work closely with the Museums and Libraries Service.

Resourceful

We rely on grants, subscriptions, donations and advertising and on our volunteers. In Our Age costs over £6,000 a year to produce including printing and paper costs. We distribute some paper copies free, because we want everyone to read it.

Key dates

  • 1989 Herefordshire Lore founded
  • 1992 Amazing How Times Change booklet published
  • 1993 Launch of Age To Age Magazine
  • 1996 The Shopkeepers Tale booklet published
  • 1997 The Schoolchildren’s Tale booklet published
  • 2002 Interviews with former Rotherwas Munitions workers (South Wye Community Funds)
  • 2003 In The Munitions: Women at War in Herefordshire book published
  • 2003 Funding crisis: Age To Age shuts down after eleven years
  • 2004 Rotherwas A Wartime Walk leaflet published
  • 2005 Home Made – Home Grown Heritage Lottery Grant book published
  • 2006 In Our Age Magazine first published
  • 2007 Butchers, Bakers, Cider-makers Heritage Lottery Grant
  • 2007 A Slap of the Hand – The History of Hereford Market oral-history book published
  • 2008 Commemorative issue of In Our Age marking 60th anniversary of the NHS
  • 2009 Launch of our City Shop Front project
  • 2011 Partnership project with the Cathedral Close Heritage Lottery grant
  • 2013 MILK, our first Little Herefordshire History booklet published
  • 2014 Launch of our campaign for a Rotherwas Munitions Memorial
  • 2015 Telling The Story – Memories from World War One
  • 2018 Weeping Poppies audio project
  • 2018 River Voices Extraoridnary Stories from the Wye book published Heritage Lottery Grant
  • 2019 Herefordshire’s Home Front in World War Two book published
  • 2020 Health Herefordshire, our Second Little Herefordshire History book published
  • 2023 Hereford History Day
  • 2024 Hereford History Day
  • 2024-25 Historic recording digitised and prepared for permanent preservation
  • 2026 River City, a project in partnership with the Herefordshire Wildlife Trust

  • Today — recording continues

Herefordshire Lore People

Current Volunteers:
  • Chair – Bill Laws
  • Editor –  Marsha O’Mahony
  • Treasurer – Harvey Payne
  • Proofreader – Sandy Green
  • Archive editor – Bill Laws
  • Funding – Linda Ward
  • Webmaster – Christopher Preece
  • Chris Tomlinson
  • Irene Tomlinson
  • Keith James
  • Krystina James
  • Joyce Chamberlain
  • Jean Mayne
  • Yve James
  • Judith Morgan
  • Becca Savage
  • Barbara Litherland
  • Ethan Watkins
  • Francesca Davies
Some of the Many Past Volunteers:

Peter Mayne, Julie Orton-Davies, Betty Webb, Rosemary Lillico, Bobbie Blackwell, Mary Horner, Stasia Dzierza, Elizabeth Semper O’Keef, Sandy Green, Liz Rouse, Mary Hillary, Mavis Matthews, John Turner, Siriol Collins, Lenora Williams, Lennie Williams, Sandy Green, Anna Falcini, Barbara Dawson, Heather Allan, Derick Barnes, Carol Smith and Eileen Klotz.

Others