Great Brickhill Heritage Project Annual Report May 2024

Introduction

The background to this story concerns COVID, the 2020 lockdown and the not-going-out syndrome. I had turned to writing, publishing and website development. I then saw an opportunity to combine these with another passion; photography.    

The Heritage Site website was started by me in July 2022 as the result of a presentation to the village about the late Queen’s Jubilee Event held locally. The site gained momentum through the summer months with the first version of the site in early September 2022. The Parish Council viewed a number of presentations of the site and encouraged the development as a worthwhile addition to the village’s assets going forward. 

By last May (May 2023), the site was substantially completed. This included a ‘membership’ element to accommodate the duty of care designed into the site from day one. This was to protect the content for those many families past and present who had contributed to the site. The images had been submitted by a wide range of people and collated for the site using specialist software. Marcus Feinhols had supported the site from the beginning of the year and allowed the site funding to be shared between me and Marcus.  Last September, I presented the then current version to the Parish Council, looking for agreement for the site to be taken on by them. The PC started to fund the site from this point. This was an ongoing process that was finally agreed in the early months of 2024. 

New Site Management Team 

A new Site Management Team was appointed in March 2024, chaired by David Bratt, and assisted by a small team of:

IT Specialists;

• Paul Murray (Website)
• James Hu (Membership)
• Marcus Feinhols (Social Media)

and

Editorial Specialists;

• Debbie Pincott
• Tom Rolls
• Brian Wright
• David Marlow (Advisor)

The planned handover date for the project was 31 Mar 24 and was met. The accounts are now controlled by the Parish Council who continue to support the project. 

The development and handover process has been recorded in a series of documents kept on the site.

Handover Meeting Apr 24

Going Forward

The Management Team discussed the website and possibilities for future 

1. Continue to develop village related content.
2. Consider Blue (or other colour) Plaques with QR code.
3. Village walk-round map with signposts.
4. Community Café could be used as venue for Heritage site – TV and related guides 

Website administration and software subscriptions 

The Team discussed; 

• How license subscriptions income should be deal with, and the provision of annual accounts. 
• Member registration to be approved
• How to get new content to site, how it should be administered and developed 
• How to identify the collection of new material from local residents, clubs and village organisations
• That DM would continue to support the team for the time being 

A Success Story!

• We have created a specialist website in well under 2 years
• The content is complete and rich in detail
• Comprises 275 pages, 1400 images, 80 documents & PDFs
• The website is protected with a funded membership scheme
• We have a site management team
• We have debt free funding in place to take us forward