Blogs

Most volunteers working on the MyHouseMyStreet project start by getting involved with data entry but many eventually choose a single streets' history to research in depth. I have not selected a particular street to study, preferring instead to help out others with their work and contribute in this way.
 
Consequently, I’ve been involved in visiting lots of the streets being researched and chatting to residents, explaining the project and gaining their permission to display MyHouseMyStreet posters on their properties.
 
Invariably, when I visit a street almost everyone is very receptive to the project and keen to participate. However, there’s usually one household that’s wary of the initiative and who say they would prefer not to join in.
 
I’m told by longstanding volunteers that, come the time of our street exhibitions, even these ‘die hards’ usually come round and, upon seeing other’s displaying posters on their properties, agree to participate.
 
Just last week, I was out speaking to the friendly folk in Brighton’s Sydney Street. As per usual, with the exception of one character, everyone showed enormous enthusiasm and interest in the project, agreeing to place our posters in their shop windows, and sometimes fliers on their counters. Hopefully, the solitary naysayer will enjoy the event, once it’s in full swing!
 
I also visited Hove’s Waterloo Street, where I talked to residents and also met the "Old Market" gardener, and the manager of the Iron Duke pub, once again a happy group of people keen to be involved however they could.
 
Some of my favourite recent activities have involved visits to record centres. In the East Sussex Records Office, we uncovered pre-war plans for a proposed Newsreel cinema in Charles Street, Brighton. It was never built.  In the Brighton History Centre, leafing through Street Directories dating from 1845, we found an old advertisements for a Sydney Street businesses that still has local practitioners, the listing: ‘Left Off Clothing bought’.
 
It’s amazing what local history can be found when you just scratch at the surface of the huge reserves of records that are held in the area.
 
Jill

For months we have been transcribing information from census returns and street directories into our database. As might be expected for a project handling so much material, every now and again, people make transcription errors.

It seems unlikely that we will notice every error and, in due course, we will rely upon the public to flag-up mistakes, for correction.

Meantime, one of our volunteers has demonstrated a very keen eye for spotting entry errors in the vast sea of persons names, employers names, jobs, places of birth, etc. that constitutes the information in our database.

Amy took a mathematics degree and is a business analyst by profession. Perhaps it's no surprise that she is good at spotting what so many of us miss when we work on the MHMS project. It's certainly a good thing we've attracted her help though, without her eagle eyes a lot of Smith, Brighton and Sussex entries would be sitting in our system as, Smuth, Broghton and Susssex.

Now we just need another couple of volunteers with her skill levels, one to decipher the occasionally illegible hand of the enumerator and the other to identify the transcription errors of the past! Okay, two superhuman volunteers needed!

We are staging and presenting a lot of events during this year's Brighton Festival. We hope you will drop by and partake of as many as possible. Each event will offer the opportunity to pick up material about the MyHouseMyStreet project. Or, you might consider coming along to one of our 'local architecture' talks and hearing about the project in person.

You may have noticed in the press recently that we have been able to secure a rare C A Busby architectural drawing. You can take a look at this during our 'local architecture' talks and get a real feel for the type of document that MyHouseMyStreet is always keen to reveal.

Our selected MyHouseMyStreet locations for 2011 might not have been architect designed, in the main, but its still possible to find architectural drawings of the houses in them from the distant past, as mid-to-late-19th C architects and surveyors often produced drawings when commissioned to alter the original houses.

ESRO in Lewes is the place to look for such documents, or of course, in your property file, where drawings might sit alongside house deeds. If both places turn up nothing, there's always the loft to explore!