Help is at hand

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.

Initial thoughts

Well, soon after we received notification of the grant we got ourselves down to Brighton where our web developers, Surface Impression (www.surfaceimpression.com), are based. It was good to hit the ground running and discuss initial thoughts about how it will work. Now all we have to do is provide Surface Impression with 10 text records by the end of the year

Right up our street

We are very pleased to announce that The Friends of Chertsey Museum have received funding for an exciting new Chertsey Museum App.

Work has already started on developing a app which will enable users to view items in the museum’s photographic collection whilst on the move. The project has been made possible by a Heritage Lottery Fund (HLF) All Our Stories grant enabling us to increase public engagement with the museum collections. As part of the grant appliation we have promised to keep a digital record of the project - hence this blog!

The project will initially focus on the shops and offices in Chertsey and the app will be free to download and users will be able to click on the link and instantly see how the shops in the town have changed over time. We aim to have the app available in mid May 2013 to coincide with an exhibition on shops and shopping - so watch this space.

www.chertseymuseum.org.uk