A COMMUNITY MAGAZINE
HEWORTH WITHOUT YORK · 2026
Heworth Without: Hopes and Memories rhyme A celebration of place, people and shared memory - bringing local history, creativity and new technology together at Christ Church. S T O R I E S · P H O T O G R A P H S · C O N V E R S AT I O N S
01 / THE PROJECT
HOPES AND MEMORIES RHYME
A place remembered together. The project grew from relationships already rooted in Heworth Without.
We had built strong relationships with many residents of Heworth Without through previous projects at Christ Church, weekly visits to Monday morning's Coffee Shop and creative collaborations with Thursday's Senior Friends. Those connections had also grown through outreach with Hempland Primary School and Archbishop Holgate's School. Many of the people we had worked with wanted to go deeper into local history than earlier projects had allowed. Conversations led by Rosemary Thompson revealed how much curiosity existed about the landscape beneath familiar streets - and about the stories people themselves carried. Photographs and memories became a portal into the past. We asked what people remembered, which places had stayed with them, and what old images could tell us about a city that had never stopped changing. The emphasis stayed easy, social and welcoming: a cup of tea, a photograph, a story, a question. From those simple beginnings came a lively exchange between generations, between personal memory and public history, and between analogue archives and digital tools.
“A cup of tea, a photograph, a story, a question - and suddenly the past was in the room with us.” 02
02 / PEOPLE
CHRIST CHURCH, HEWORTH
Memory became a shared activity. Sessions brought older residents, younger participants and project collaborators into the same space - talking, listening, recording and learning from one another.
Conversation first.
Across generations.
Skills with purpose.
The project was built around relaxed encounters rather than formal lessons. Personal recollections, chance associations and the pleasure of being together gave the historical material its energy.
Previous beneficiaries of intergenerational work helped co-run sessions, keeping the atmosphere collaborative and giving younger participants a genuine role in documenting local stories.
Digital confidence grew because the technology served something meaningful: preserving memories, improving photographs, making slideshows and helping participants share what they had made.
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0 3 / L AY E R S O F P L A C E
T H E N , N O W, N E X T
History underfoot. New tools in hand. Ridge and furrow Aerial surveys mapped surviving broad ridge-andfurrow earthworks - physical traces of the medieval open-field farming that once shaped the landscape.
Roman connections Just beyond the historic boundaries of the Roman legionary fortress of Eboracum, the surrounding area retained evidence of agricultural settlements and field systems.
Prehistoric footprints Work across the wider Vale of York and at nearby Heslington East showed a landscape used for complex, long-lasting settlement long before the modern suburb took shape.
The Rowntree legacy Heworth Without also sat within York's philanthropic and garden-village story, linking local memory to the wider social history of the city.
Bringing photographs back to life We explored how AI tools could colourise and sharpen photographs, and how edited images could be turned into slideshows with voiceovers, subtitles and soundtracks.
04 · HEWORTH WITHOUT
Practical digital skills sat alongside the creative work - from using passwords confidently to sharing finished pieces online.
Heworth Without was not treated as a place frozen in history, but as a living continuum - shaped by what came before and by the people still making its story.
The technology mattered because it opened another way into memory: not replacing the old photograph, but helping people look again.