Find a Starting Point – The Urban Landscape
If you are thinking about where to start your research, as a first step, have a read through our three starting point pages, The Urban Landscape, the Rural Landscape and Home Front Events.
These should give you some ideas about how you can use your skills and expertise to best effect.
So if your enjoy delving onto your local archives, looking at historic records, maps and photographs you could consider adding to the Home Front Legacy project’s understanding of the changes that took place in towns and cities across the UK.
We would like to know about the buildings and industries that already existed but were pressed into service for other purposes, so for example town halls that became recruiting offices, churches that hosted war charity work, local industries such as engineering companies that changed production to build tanks, lorries and aeroplanes or to produce uniforms, boots, and leather goods such as horse harnesses.
“A largely unexplored topic is how the rhythm of town life was affected by the war and how familiar buildings and places took on new roles. Contemporary. newspaper articles and advertisements may reveal how the geography of everyday life changed, and extraordinary local events, such as the arrival of prisoners of war. Other articles may alert researchers to buildings used by the Red Cross to pack parcels for troops, houses used by groups of women for knitting socks and hats, and preparing hospital supplies. Places were also taken over to provide soldiers with cafes and reading rooms, or national kitchens to feed the civilian population. Reference may also be found to allotments and some even remained to be photographed in the early 1920s by the fliers from Aerofilms whose images may be viewed on-line on the Britain from Above website“
Wayne Cocroft, Senior Archaeological Investigator, Historic England
You will need to be able to identify the location of the place you are researching – a National Grid Reference – so you can enter the site into the Home Front Legacy records. Your field work might simply be about gathering basic information or may be more detailed.