The enormity of the project is just beginning to hit me. You know how it is when you're discussing something with an expert and they make it sound oh so easy? That little phrase, 'and then you just get the longitude/latitude marker' - makes it all sound so simple! Thankfully, Aoife Hegarty, a history MA student at Royal Holloway University, came to us last month and offered to volunteer.
Luckily for us, and Aoife, Chertsey Museum has been recording shop details for the past 15 or more years. Every year one of our volunteers walks up and down Guildford Street and London Street making a note of the names and trade of each of the shops. This has been supplemented at some point in the past by research from trade directories and other sources in our collection to give an idea of the changing shops of the town right back to the 17th and 18th century. So, researching the businesses wasn't quite as time consuming as it could have been. However, it turns out that 'just' getting the lat/long marker isn't as quick as it sounds, made all the more tricky by some of the building having been demolished! Still, it's all part of the process and the more people working on the project we're making good progress.
