The Geoff Butter Collection, completed over the last 50 years, was started as a bit of a hobby for local Adderley boy Geoff Butter in his teens, but progressed into something which rather took over his life when he retired. Geoff became known as the man you went to if you wanted to find out anything about Adderley, or if you had some book or document that your family had saved, and you thought it might be of interest to Geoff.
As he gathered more and more information Geoff progressed from using a back bedroom to building a shed in the garden to house the thousands of documents he had collected.
However, it was clear that Geoff’s family, although very supportive of all that he had done, were not keen to take on the role of custodians of this collection if anything happened to Geoff. So, ever practical, Geoff approached a number of people in Adderley to explore whether the village wanted to take ownership.
On seeing just a fraction of his amazing life’s work Paul Nash, who had lived in the village for a mere 9 years, immediately did some research, spoke to someone at Heritage Lottery and put in an outline proposal. The Heritage Lottery came straight back and said they would be willing to consider a full bid for funding.
After gaining permission from Geoff to go ahead with this, an open event was organised in the village hall and Geoff came along with some samples from his collection to show everyone. There was a huge amount of interest in this, particularly from people who had recently moved into the village who were keen to find a sense of place in the history of their new home.
As a result a committee/working group was formed and the hours of painstaking work began compiling a bid worthy of funding from the Heritage Lottery Fund. Everyone was a little shell shocked when the Lottery came back to us to say that they were willing to fund the project in full!
That gave us £47,000 to create website with an archive of all the many photographs, maps, press articles, minutes and historical artefacts. This is proudly called The Geoff Butter Collection. Creation of the online archive meant involving Shropshire Archive who were just as excited as ourselves when they saw the collection. They agreed to scan and copy all the thousands items and provide them in the correct format for the website – the cost of this is funded from our grant. Shropshire Archive will also retain many of the items of the Collection which need to be stored in specialist temperature controlled environments to preserve them.
We also approached Keele University and they agreed to come on board with the project through Professor Siobhan Talbot Dr Siobhan Talbott FRHistS FHEA, Reader in Early Modern History and Director of Education, School of Humanities, who has been an inspiration to us with her unfailing enthusiasm and ideas. She in turn suggested that Keele could partner us in funding a Phd student to work with Shropshire Archive to explore details of our history which remain unclear, but you can hear more about it here: Keele historian to support Shropshire community heritage project
An approach to Adderley CE Primary School (Addmore Federation) Head teacher Stephanie Henny to see if the school might be interested in being involved brought a further enthusiastic response and more ideas flowed, with the school agreeing to support the writing of National Curriculum materials focused on an aspect of the history of Adderley. Siobhan and Keele University are going to also be involved in this aspect of the project supporting the staff and pupils with workshops to be held to develop the materials. We are thrilled that the Heritage Lottery have stipulated that they want us to make these curriculum materials available nationally for all schools. What an amazing outcome for a small village school to be on the map nationally!
In addition to the above, two sets of display boards are being purchased which will be used to display aspects of the project to the public. The boards are flexible, portable and easily stored and can be used at the school, the village hall and the church as and when needed. The displays can be easily changed depending on the theme of the event being held.
Not only has Geoff Butter collected an amazingly diverse range of history, memories, artefacts, and materials, he has also, through this, identified some startling facts about this tiny village of Adderley. From the fact that it was once bigger and more important than Market Drayton, to the fact that it merited its very own “The Adderley” steam engine and was host to a Railway station with sidings and its own waiting room and station master, to hosting a hospital for Officers in the First World War, and a PoW camp in the Second World War. Not forgetting it has its own site of a Motte and Castle Hill, and was, eventually, the home of a branch of the Corbet Family (originally Corbeau) whom, we speculate came over to England during the Norman Conquest.
In fact there is more than enough history here going back to the Doomsday Book, to justify asking the Heritage Lottery for funding to create a History Trail around the village. This will be created over the coming year with information boards strategically placed to inform people of the historical significance of each site.
Our beautiful village church St Peter’s also has its own very special history and we will work with those who have already done so much to record this, to make sure that this history is captured for all to read and understand in the future.
But our history isn’t all in material items, it also resides in the memories of people who lived here and passed stories down to their children and grandchildren. We will be capturing Oral Histories as well of past events and already, we have a trove of memories to record about people’s experience of the Pandemic, which is already part of our history. We will train adults and children to record Oral Histories which will be available to all on the website and be added to as time goes on.
This the story of how the Geoff Butter Collection came to our attention, and we hope that you will join us on our journey as we create the website, the Trail, the stories and even more of the history we are making every day as we live in our lovely village of Adderley.
Come and join us, on the website, or in person on our Heritage Trail and at events in the village hall which we will advertise here on the website over the coming months.
Get involved as a volunteer, the more the merrier. We want to set up a local history society to continue to work on this amazing treasure trove we have been gifted, to add to the information, photographs and history as we find out more. Join us and be part of making this happen.
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