In April 2025, Campsbourne Community Collective (CCC) launched a local heritage project with a workshop involving residents and service-providers, local historians, archivists, councillors and academics.
The project, led by resident-researchers and funded through a grant from the Open University, works with UCL’s MemoryMapper to create a digital resource that can be annotated with information about the evolving natural environment, infrastructure, people and events. Historical resources (including newspaper articles on ‘The Conduct of Campsbourne People’ from 1915 and ‘Scotland Yard’s Hunt for Campsbourne’s Warewolf’ in 1981, artefacts like Campsbourne School’s ‘Punishment Book’, accounts of evacuations during WW2 and interviews with local activist Baroness Martha Osamor) are supplemented with oral histories from groups less represented in our archives. The resident-researchers also selected key themes of interest: childhood, migration, activism and finally, gossip, myths and rumours!
Digital Resource
The map is now in the final stages of production and due to launch in Spring 2026, when the CCC will work with local organisations (schools, retirement homes, migrant centres and the council) to explore how it can be used for education, community-building, improvements to services and activism by better understanding the changing nature of the community and learning from past innovations. It has also prompted the CCC to think about the politics of archiving and how they record their own activities as future history!
Image credits
Campsbourne Community Collective