New CBA Project to Record Drill Halls etc

[MartinWills]

I have just picked up a Council for British Archeology leaflet for the Home Front Legacy 1914-1918 project.

The aim is to identify, over the centenary period, WW1 relics remains across the UK to indlude:

Practice Trenches

Training Camps

Munitions Factories

Early Pill boxes

...and... Drill Halls

It is interesting to see that the project and the latter category, in particular, will be starting from scatch ........

See www.homefrontlegacy.org.uk

[John_Hartley]

If they're intending working from scratch, I presume they havnt been sufficiently bothered to do a bit of basic Googling. Which, if they had, would have revealed the excellent drill halls project - http://www.drillhalls.org/. Job done (pretty much).

[Dragon]

John alerted me to this post. (Thanks.) Martin, can you tell from the CBA information whether it has any connection with the English Heritage project which is doing exactly the same thing? http://www.english-heritage.org.uk/caring/first-world-war-home-front/home-front-legacy/

Without going into much detail in public, I have correspondence with EH dating from 2012 after they got in touch with us about a report they wanted to do on drill halls and whether they could use (credited) data, but the person concerned hasn't been in touch since.

When EH launched their home front legacy, I contacted them to discuss the time involved in duplicating information, but their reply seems to have got lost in space.

I realise that the Drill Halls project hasn't got a monopoly on information and we've been very grateful for material submitted and pending while we had to prioritise real life (in my case several close family deaths which needed administrating), and obviously we're pleased that these neglected buildings may be brought into the public consciousness. What I don't get is the repeated duplication of effort - which is happening in so many projects being launched to mark the Centenary.

Every location in the Drill Halls project is sourced, so if people want to take photos of the premises as they are in 2014, they have an address book ready made for most of the counties in England and Wales. We have the database for the counties not yet uploaded and for Scotland too.

Gwyn

[MartinWills]

John alerted me to this post. (Thanks.) Martin, can you tell from the CBA information whether it has any connection with the English Heritage project which is doing exactly the same thing? http://www.english-heritage.org.uk/caring/first-world-war-home-front/home-front-legacy/

Without going into much detail in public, I have correspondence with EH dating from 2012 after they got in touch with us about a report they wanted to do on drill halls and whether they could use (credited) data, but the person concerned hasn't been in touch since.

When EH launched their home front legacy, I contacted them to discuss the time involved in duplicating information, but their reply seems to have got lost in space.

I realise that the Drill Halls project hasn't got a monopoly on information and we've been very grateful for material submitted and pending while we had to prioritise real life (in my case several close family deaths which needed administrating), and obviously we're pleased that these neglected buildings may be brought into the public consciousness. What I don't get is the repeated duplication of effort - which is happening in so many projects being launched to mark the Centenary.

Every location in the Drill Halls project is sourced, so if people want to take photos of the premises as they are in 2014, they have an address book ready made for most of the counties in England and Wales. We have the database for the counties not yet uploaded and for Scotland too.

Gwyn

Gwyn,

It is, as I understand it, a CBA project with a whole set of partners, including EH, various Universities and other organisations (such as Historic Scotland).

I did contact them to ask if they were intending to work from scratch on Drill Halls or use/partner with the extensive work already done by the Drill Halls Project. I await a reply once they have picked themselves up off the floor in shock and will keep you posted. I guess the difference between their project and the Drill Halls Project is that they have probably sourced major project funding!

[Dragon]

EH doesn't seem to be admitting to being anyone's partner!

I am all for having an up-to-date, illustrated record of what exists. I can't work out what they want people to do: wander the streets hopefully? Because on my computer, in IE8, none of the links for how to do it work. If you don't know where to start looking, it can be pretty wearying. I can imagine scenes like the one where a local history person in a library told me to go and find a Great War veteran and ask him. The fact is that I personally have visited - visited, not relied on Google Earth - hundreds of UK towns, libraries, museums and so on to check addresses, walk to the address, see whether the place was there or not and, if it was, take its photo, even going inside if the owner let me. I know Graeme has also invested hundreds of hours and miles in the quest.

I'm also somewhat cheesed off by a celebrity television military historian speaking as if no-one could ever possibly have thought of this before.

Thank you for contacting them.

Gwyn

[Cannock John]

I am all for having an up-to-date, illustrated record of what exists.

As a centenary project on the Geograph website I have tried to pull together photos of the surviving halls using contributions from over 200 contributors. It is really only a snapshot of the survivors and a few that have disappeared in the last few years.

http://www.geograph.org.uk/article/WW1-Great-War-Centenary---Drill-Halls

[Dragon]

Thanks for that. Obviously the thought of capturing this part of our heritage before it's too late has engaged some people's interest, which is good. Some of your contributors have used older photos which don't represent the hall as it is now. For example, Horncastle (Lincs) is now the Stanhope Hall. far from being on the verge of demolition, it was rescued by its community, with some input from us (Drill Halls Project). It's now alive and thriving. The building pictured for Newark is the wrong building (I have been inside the former drill hall at Castlegate). There's a photo on our website of the drill hall at Lichfield (demolished 1969).

I'm afraid there are some mistakes in the book you cite as a source: we became aware of some anomalies which we then checked against contemporary records and with county libraries / heritage departments. (I don't possess a copy of the book, so I can't cite pages.) Further, some county HERs are simply wrong and one county revised all its drill hall entries in the light of accurate information which we supplied and they checked: they were relying on a well-meaning but inexperienced volunteer who made the mistake of interpreting footprints on maps without triangulating with sources and records, leading to a lot of fundamental mistakes. (Of course they should have verified his work but they didn't.)

Gwyn

[Chris_Baker]

I was going to suggest that you try to contact one of English Heritage's named subject-matter experts, but no specific contact details are provided:

http://www.english-heritage.org.uk/caring/first-world-war-home-front/eh-experts/

I can't say that I have ever heard of any of them before.

[the-5th-kings]

I am trying to find a photo of a drill hall in Liverpool which was knocked down a long time ago but the project looks like it is just for surviving drill halls.

Any idea's on how I might go about finding a photo as I have tried with no luck.

Thank you

Colin

[Dragon]

The Drill Halls Project definitely isn't solely for surviving drill halls! There are lots of archive images on the website, www.drillhalls.org. You won't, however, find Liverpool there yet because we haven't finished uploading everything: there's a backlog because I had to prioritise the work involved in sorting out and administration after several close family deaths, and we are just about ready to start uploading again.

We have some wonderful images of Liverpool, thanks to the generosity of a forum member and when they are shared everyone will see what fantastic, evocative photos they are. We also have lots of our own collection of period pictures in our database. I suggest you email us via the contact link on the website (third item from the bottom in the menu on the left) and that way you'll reach Graeme directly. If that doesn't work, send me a private message via the forum. I rarely post here now, so contact via the website is probably more reliable.

Gwyn

[Cannock John]

There's a photo on our website of the drill hall at Lichfield (demolished 1969).

I would be interested to know when the drill hall opened as the Guildhall was still in use in March 1914 and the company left from there to march to Burton on Trent in August 1914?

[Terry_Reeves]

The CBA project is a very good idea. I hope that the Drill Hall project team will be able to cooperate and bring the CBA up to speed with their work.

TR

[Cannock John]

I have input half a dozen drill halls on the CBA site on behalf of the Geograph website project. Not really sure it is worth the effort though.

English Heritage's Research Report was published last month and relies heavily on drillhalls.org website with a large proportion of photos taken from the Geograph article.

http://research.historicengland.org.uk/redirect.aspx?id=6277