The Project

The Langsett and Midhope at War Project in the beginning

Langsett & Midhope launch

How did it all start? In the pub of course. Three members of Woodhead Mountain Rescue Team and a local historian all had some knowledge of the subject. More importantly we knew nothing had ever officially been recorded. So over a pint we discussed and decided in May 2012 to see what we could do to capture the story of those times.

The following week following a chance conversation we became aware of the possibility of applying for a grant under the All Our Stories project funded by the National lottery. The next week we attended a workshop about making an application, we found out that we were eligible to apply but that we needed to complete all the necessary paperwork by the end of the June. We duly submitted our application with help throughout from Sheffield University and then it was a case of sit back and wait until the results were announced in the November.

In the meantime we hosted an open day weekend that was very encouraging in the numbers of people who attended and their interests and personal accounts.

In November we got the news that we had been awarded £7,400 from the National Lottery to further our project.

Since that time we have created a first class website , recorded 20 interviews, designed and fitted two external interpretation boards. We have a mobile / internal display that features artefacts about the project as well as digital monitors showing images and playing the recordings of our interviews. We were also successful in obtaining a local authority grant for £1,700 to enable us to provide the internal display and we have the ability to take our presentations into the community. We have hosted a number of further open days and on Saturday 31st May 2014 we held our official end of project event when we unveiled our signs to the public. Mike France the current national chairman of Mountain Rescue England and Wales and Councillor Paul Hand-Davies were invited to do the unveiling and kindly agreed.

On that day we got further information that we will be following up in the months to come. We were also approached by a local poetry group who wished to run a workshop based upon the stories we had unearthed. We will be selecting one poem to reflect that aspect of the community involvement. The funding has now ended but our project continues we had a vision of what we wanted to achieve at the start and we have achieved that vision. We also have a vision of how we will develop the project in the future.

We are all proud to be able to say we have helped to capture for future generations a piece of untold local history that is an important part of our communities and an acknowledgment to those men and women that trained here and went onto fight for the freedom that we cherish today. Some of them did not return and we hope this reflects our respect for their sacrifices.