Dave Moore, the Sandfields Pumping Station champion and public historian extraordinaire dropped me a line with an interesting social history question regarding the waterworks at Lichfield over the weekend, which I thought I’d share here today as a gentle reminder that it’s the group’s August monthly public meeting tonight (Monday 14th August 2017).

You can find out details of the meeting and agenda in a previous post by clicking here, but in short it takes place in the rear meeting room of the Bowling Green Pub in Lichfield and starts at 7:30pm.

Meanwhile, if you can help Dave and the gang fill in the blanks in the below photograph, that would be wonderful! Thanks to David and the group for fighting so hard to preserve a wonderful historic buiding.

Dave Moore wrote:

Can you help fill in the blanks? Image from Dave Moore.

Sandfields Pumping Station and the South Staffs Waterworks created a rich and varied history that covers a 160-year period. As we already know, history is not just about places or buildings, it about people.

Everyday people can tell remarkable stories about our past. These stories are a rich source of information that gives us an insight into social change and what life was like for our parents, grandparents and great grandparents. Understanding how our ancestors lived, can give us an understanding of our own sense of identity; this is why we love our oral histories.

This is a recording of Keith Johnson, who was a chemist in the laboratory at Sandfields, telling his story.

At Sandfields Pumping Station, we want to get to know the people who worked there. Not just by their name and date of birth, we want to know who they were, what job they did, who were their family, where did they live and what did they love.

As a first step, can the readers help us put some names to some faces? The team at the trust has already made a great start, but there are still some gaps. Can we fill those gaps and give these everyday people a voice from that past, so that their story can add to the understanding of our history?

Regards
David Moore

Lichfield Waterworks Trust
Public History
Lichfield Discovered

Do pop over to Dave Moore’s blog and check out the history of Sandfields Pumping Station, an almost forgotten gem – the group also has a Facebook page.

Dave is, of course, one of the leading lights of Lichfield Discovered, along with Kate ‘Cardigan’ Gomez from Lichfield Lore.

Please do attend tonight’s meeting if you’re able, it’s sure to be enlightening and educational.