HELENA CHANCE

The Woodlanders’ Lives and Landscapes project, a partnership between Buckinghamshire New University and the Chilterns Conservation Board, is part of the five-year National Heritage Lottery-funded landscape partnership ‘Chalk, Cherries and Chairs’. The partnership has brought together multiple organisations in Buckinghamshire to transform people’s connection to the landscape, wildlife and heritage of the central Chilterns through involvement in landscape and wildlife conservation and regeneration, research, and public events. The Woodlanders’ Lives and Landscapes project is led by Dr. Helena Chance, Associate Professor in Design Studies at BNU and assisted by Research Associate Dr. Lesley Hoskins.

The project began in 2018 when Dr Chance was approached by the Chilterns Conservation Board to create a community social history project based on the industrial heritage of the Chilterns as part of their bid to the National Lottery for £2.8 million to fund the ‘Chalk, Cherries and Chairs’ scheme. Dr Chance’s previous work with Wycombe Museum on the local furniture industry and their research expertise on the history of green spaces for industry (The Factory in a Garden: a History of Corporate Landscapes from the Industrial to the Digital Age, 2017) was seen by the Board as offering the potential for an opportunity to engage with a transformative community project with potential for significant social impact.

After consulting with local historians, Dr Chance decided that Woodlanders’ Lives and Landscapes would focus on four of the home-based and craft-based industries which sustained Chilterns people in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries - chairmaking, lacemaking, straw plaiting and tambour beading (the art of sewing beads onto textiles for the fashion industry). By recruiting a team of volunteer researchers and helpers, the project would uncover new knowledge about the lives of the men, women and children who depended on making things at home, or in workshops and factories. With this network of local historians and makers, the project would then put on public events to engage people in this important heritage. The bid was successful, and the scheme began in 2019 – and now, four years in, the project is celebrating many achievements.

A major recent global event - the COVID-19 pandemic – was also found to have a positive impact on the Woodlanders involved with the project. The growth in the need by people for things to do at home led to a greater number of volunteers – volunteers who were soon hard at work, with some researching their family histories and others investigating the history of village workshops and factories, straw dealers, lace schools and home-based beading work for the fashion industry. Over 70 people have volunteered for the Woodlanders project, either as researchers, or participants in workshops and other events. The project volunteers have published 21 articles on the project blog, many with cutting-edge research and with more to follow.

Other highlights of the project have been the ‘Bodgers’ Pub Tour’, led by local craftsman and historian Stuart King. Stuart takes small groups to visit Chilterns pubs where the bodgers, or chair-leg turners who worked in the woods, would go to drink, or some to work in the chairmaking workshops set up by pub landlords as a second living. In September last year the project’s straw-plait volunteers gave a workshop at Wycombe Museum to keep alive the art of plaiting for straw hats, a skill which is on the Heritage Crafts Association list of endangered crafts. In May the project held a ‘Lacemaking Taster Day’ at the university which was attended by 50 people who came to ‘have a go’ at this highly skilled craft, listen to talks and enjoy displays on the history of lacemaking. Since then, and now supported by the project, these lacemakers are in demand for lacemaking workshops in local primary schools and we are hoping to set up a lacemaking group in the university, as it is a very mindful activity!

More recently the project has been working with Wycombe Museum to curate a ground-breaking exhibition focussing on the women and girls living in Chilterns villages who worked at home, in small workshops and latterly, some in factories making lace, plaiting straw, caning and rushing chairs and doing embroidery and beading. Like so many women in history, these stories have not so far been given the recognition they deserve. The exhibition will run at Wycombe Museum from March to October this year.

For Dr Chance the greatest pleasure has been working with a team of very talented researchers and makers, meeting them monthly on Zoom or in person, getting to know the Chilterns and the area’s history more intimately, and having the opportunity to interview the charismatic Jay Blades for the Buckinghamshire History Festival in 2021, long before his appointment as Chancellor. Professionally, the project has produced significant social impact, and it featured strongly in an Impact Case Study, which achieved a 3/4 * level in the recent REF.