Newsletter – December 2011
December 14th, 2011The Society’s last meeting of 2011 was a special event to celebrate the 21st Birthday of the HHFS Research Group. The Group’s founder, Tom Pagett, started off with a short account of how the group came into being and then went on to describe their first project to record the remains of the forty or so watermills on two local streams. Following on was Irene Oliver who talked about the project to record farm buildings before they were converted to other uses: she illustrated this by concentrating on the survey of Brakemill Farm. Sheila Pearson spoke next on The Field House and explained how the group had succeeded in linking 1914 garden drawings by Gertrude Jekyll to the physical remains on the ground. The team had followed this up with dowsing to glean more information. Don Freeth then showed the photographs he had taken when the old sewage farm was replaced by the modern pumping station at the end of Cavendish Drive. The presentations were concluded by a tiny sample of the many hours of oral history that members of the group had recorded over the years – a precious resource that is often overlooked. To round the evening off, the 76 members and visitors enjoyed a buffet, accompanied by a specially made birthday cake. Dr Mike Hodder, Birmingham City Council Planning Archaeologist, proposed a vote of thanks to the Group.