Victoria County Histories (VCH)
The Victorian County Histories were set up in 1899 with the aim of providing a full account of the social, economic and architectural history of the country of England, based on exhaustive original research. The eventual publications were organised by location and were published in an extended series of folio volumes. The project is by no means complete. The series is of great value to historians, but the volumes are large and expensive and only appropriate to reference libraries. In very recent years the advisory committee of the VCH has decided to broaden its approach to include community-based projects based on thematic studies while preserving the original research aims. The intention is to publish these studies on line as well as in affordable paperbacks. The aim is to involve the communities involved in the process of assembling information about their village or town, using research tools including oral history and recent reminiscence. The new studies will be written in part by the people who live in the communities now and help them to gain experience in using historical material.
Heritage education is an essential objective in the campaigns of the VCH, which has been strongly influenced by broadening definitions of ‘heritage’. According to their mission statement, the VCH aims to ‘interpret the origins, development and in some cases, decline of English local communities in the context of landscape and settlement; to provide comprehensive and accessible accounts of the social, economic, religious, administrative and political history of those communities’, to provide a work of reference on this subject, and to ‘disseminate these accounts both on-line and in printed form to reach the broadest possible audience’. A further aim is to ‘encourage involvement of volunteers from the local community in VCH work’ and to encourage a broad interest in local and community history. The VCH has already tested the educational use of materials gleaned from its research in projects for schools mounted on line. They aim to provide the same reliability of content in forms appealing to children and adapted to the National Curriculum. All the sites contain references to interpretation of buildings in a wider historical context. The projects are tailored to localities and teach children about where they live and the materials they can use to find out more about them. EW
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