Philip Riden, Department of History, will be addressing local historians at a workshop in Matlock Derbyshire to discuss developments in the Victoria County History (VCH) project.
VCH is a long-term local history research project of international standing, founded in 1899 and dedicated to Queen Victoria to commemorate her Diamond Jubilee. Later this year HM The Queen will accept a re-dedication of VCH to mark her own Diamond Jubilee.
The aim of VCH, since its inception, has been to compile a history of every parish in England, based on original research. The books are issued in sets for each county. Since 1900 some 250 volumes have been published for almost all the counties of England. Older volumes that are out of print are made available through British History Online.
VCH is complete for about a third of the counties of England, in progress for another third, and dormant elsewhere for lack of funds.
In Derbyshire, where two volumes of VCH were published in 1905–7, work restarted in 2001. Between 2005 and 2009 an award from the Heritage Lottery Fund enabled two paperback studies to be published, making available VCH research in a more popular format. In Nottinghamshire work restarted in 2009.
In both counties the project is led by a part-time county editor, who is on the staff of the Department of History at Nottingham University and is helped by about forty volunteer researchers, who meet weekly or fortnightly in groups run on the lines of university continuing education classes.
In Derbyshire the first of the new hardback volumes is due to be published in autumn 2013. Draft text for both counties is being mounted on the VCH website.
For more information see: www.victoriacountyhistory.ac.uk