Meet the Searchers

It is being increasingly recognised that the sudden transition from employment in a convivial and stimulating job to a retirement that provides similar satisfactions can be a difficult one to make.

A group co-ordinated by ex-Ruskin College lecturer Katherine Hughes and Museum of Oxford community volunteer officer Neil Stevenson aims to help by providing support and guidance for people in this age group to pursue individual research projects.

The very friendly atmosphere, which encourages participants to share their discoveries and discuss ideas for future topics, is one of the elements which have made the group so popular with older Oxford residents — about 25 attend regularly.

Now nearly two years old, the Searchers group meets every Wednesday, in blocks of ten weeks, at the Town Hall chambers next to the museum.

It is open to everyone, whatever their previous qualifications, skills, experience or level of formal education. This policy leads to the greatest possible mix of backgrounds and the best possible opportunities for learning from one another. In partnership with Agewell Group Oxford, the Searchers have published a book, Our Working Lives, available in the museum shop. It illustrates the hugely interesting variety of jobs members were formerly engaged in — they write about everything from pea picking and Rudolf Steiner special education to car manufacture.

Individual publications are also appearing, thanks to money from the Grassroots Fund. The first, Dave Rimmer’s The Past Revisited: A Grandfather Discovered, is one of many studies by Searchers members focusing on previously mysterious aspects of their own family history.

Several of these found their way into an exhibition held at the Museum of Oxford in May. Bridget Newman, who has been involved with Searchers for a year, has been exploring the history of some clothes in her grandparents’ dressing-up box.

“My grandfather was in the Indian Civil Service,” she said. “The clothes, which include a clown’s hat and jacket, were made in India in 1910 for my father and his siblings.”

The clothes, and photos relating to them, can be seen in the exhibition.

Avril Roberts, who has researched the wartime experiences of her husband and his twin brother in India, also has photos to supplement the sad story she uncovered, and a stack of letters that the two soldiers wrote to their mother.

Personal objects and records such as these are obviously a useful resource, and, where they ask more questions than they answer, may form a jumping-off point for an investigation. Searchers also make extensive use of the Internet, and local collections such as those housed at the Centre for Oxfordshire Studies. Barbara Johnston, who has lived in St Clement’s, in a Victorian house on the site of the old brewery, for 20 years, found both of these helpful in her research into the area’s history. She said: “As a child I remember there were graves still on the roundabout in the Plain, where the old church used to be — I managed to track down a picture of it, which is in the exhibition.”

She also wanted to convey a sense of what the place is like now, adding to her own reflections those of neighbours, including a man who had lived there all his life.

Searchers’ investigations are not confined to Oxford. Annie Creswick-Dawson has been trying to find out more about the life of her great-grandfather, a sculptor in bronze who was associated with the Arts and Crafts Movement and was a protégé of Ruskin. Benjamin Creswick, she discovered, was originally apprenticed as a knife-grinder in Sheffield and worked a great deal in Birmingham.

One of his designs, a large frieze which she has photographed for the exhibition, decorates the front of Cutlers’ Hall in London.

Excitingly, a maquette for another piece of work, which was never commissioned, was found there. thanks to her interest.

Roy Hoare’s project on the mining disasters at Senghenydd and Aberfan was inspired by a very emotional trip down the pit at Blaenavon where, but for the chance of his mother leaving Wales to go into service in London, he might have spent his own working life.

“My grandfather and uncle were miners,” he said. “The visit stirred lots of memories. It was pretty scary — when the lamps were switched off we were near a pair of gates which small boys used to sit and operate all day. I found it intriguing and rather horrifying.”

He values the opportunity that Searchers offers to discuss his own and other peoples’ work.

“Every Searcher updates us about their research regularly,” said Katherine, who acts as tutor to the group but also learns alongside them, following interests of her own. “When they have finished they give presentations — though nobody has to do anything they don’t want to do. Where it is relevant, they bring artefacts like military medals, or things they have made, like silverware and paintings.

“It is relaxed — some people find they are talking in public for the first time.”

New members are always welcome.

For information about the Searchers group, e-mail katherineihughes@yahoo.co.uk or call 01865 776643