Colchester Recalled Oral History Group

Welcome to our Home Page

Colchester Recalled is a voluntary group compiling an archive of recorded memories about Colchester & District over the past 100 years.

We have completed more than 3,000 hours of recording, mostly interviews with over 1,000 local people, but also live recordings of local events as they happened (for example the Woolworths Fire of 1973). We have produced several CDs made up of ‘sound bites’ taken from our interviews.

For example: ‘The Century Speaks’ has memories of 20th century Colchester from the Boer War to the Gulf War. ‘The Essex Ballads’ are dialect poems which we recorded using people still able to speak the fast disappearing North Essex accent. Both cost £9.50

The archive is stored in the Colchester Museum Resources Centre, but public-access copies of our tapes are held in the Albert Sloman Library at the University of Essex, and at the Essex Record Office in Chelmsford.

• Colchester Recalled holds a monthly meeting at the Colchester Institute to listen to their latest recordings and hear a speaker on a topic of local history.
• A team of volunteers meet at the Museum to index and archive the collection.
• Members who have completed a short training course conduct regular interviews with equipment supplied by Colchester Recalled.
• Other members listen to all new recordings and make summaries of their contents.
• We publish a magazine called 'Colchester Recalled' full of photos and local people's memories which can be purchased for £1.00 at Gunton's in Crouch Street or from Jim Robinson, telephone 01206 540655.

If you are interested in learning more, telephone 01206 546775 and ask for Andrew Phillips.

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