Yorkshire Waterways Heritage Society
Chair’s Report to the Annual General Meeting 2024
During the financial year 1st November 2022 - 31st October 2023 the Society’s website has really taken shape. The website is not just a landing page for information about the society, it is a means of gathering information, photographs and research and making them available and accessible to members of the public. It has been wonderful to see the old museum’s collection of photographs be catalogued and presented in the web gallery in such a way that they tell a story and are able to have input from members of the public. Thank you to David and Grahm for all the work on that.
The Society now has two talks it regularly presents – by the Society I really mean David! They are called Yorkshire’s Watermen: illuminating their lives with genealogy, and Life and Death on Yorkshire’s Waterways. David has presented them to Bradford FHS, Wakefield FHS, Ilkley LHS, Boothferry FHS and Howden U3A. This year they have been presented to Snaith LHS, Castleford Library and Selby LHS, and there are bookings for Snaith Men’s Association, Haxey & Westwoodside, Calderdale and Bradford.
Events – wise the Society attended York and Huddersfield family history fair, and the Goole Local History Summer exhibition at Junction. We also attended Friends of West Park ‘Vintage in the Park’ event, where we did some community consultation on what they want to see happen for Goole’s 200[th] anniversary in 2026. This year we will be attending York again as well as other family history events, and will be having a stall at the Yorkshire Heritage Summit on 11[th] May in Hull.
Last year we were given a challenge by one of our members – could we do something high profile, and could that thing be getting Robbie Cumming from Canal Boat Diaries to give a talk at Junction. With some perseverance we delivered on this request, and we had a fantastic evening of entertainment from Robbie on 12[th] April to a sell out crowd.
At this point I want to mark the passing of Mr Pickering, whose idea that was. We found out on the evening of the show that Mr Pickering that passed away, and we were all shocked and saddened. Mr Pickering had been a supporter of the society from early on, and we thank him for his help, support and inspiration. We have sent condolences on behalf of the Society to his wife Susan.
Looking forward, the ground work laid last year is resulting in exciting projects this year. The society has been successful with a bid to Hull Maritime for a 20 week programme of Heritage Workshops led by David. We were also successful with a bid to the Windfarm QuickFix scheme for a digitization programme. This will involve digitising cassette tapes of watermen that were originally recorded in the 80s so that they can be transcribed and included on the website – I can’t wait to hear them. We will also be professionally digitising documents, and have a plan for making the Railway on the Water book available again. We reported last year that a grant from the Windfarm had enabled the Society to purchase archival quality boxes for the
Masterman collection to be stored in – members and volunteers have been doing a great job of working their way through the collection, cataloguing and making sure they will be well preserved.
The Society intends to play its part in celebrating the 200[th] anniversary of the opening of the Port and Town of Goole. Members attend the Goole 2026 working group and now the date is creeping closer we will start to firm up plans.