Update - December 2025
Remember This?
I have been in contact with Huntingdonshire archives in Huntingdon and they would be very happy to accept the photographs we took during the first lockdown over 5 years ago now in May 2020 into the archives. It will be a digital record of Great Paxton that will be continually updated into the future to the latest image formats so preserving and making the photographs accessible to future generations as the lockdown (and we with it) become a part of history.
It would add to the value of this "Future History" if some details could be attached to the pictures, so if you had your picture taken in this way you are invited to submit to me anything about yourselves, the picture, your lives in Great Paxton etc. to be stored alongside the picture. If you want to do this, please let me have your words by the 15th of December so I can collate everything prior to sending it off.
Contact by , text (07483 815160) or via the village FaceBook group.
We Are Great Paxton
Initially the idea was to record the present as the history of the future, wouldn't it be fascinating to have pictures from 1920 (say) of people in the village standing in front of their houses (your house)? Then lockdown happened and prompted by a BBC article, I thought I'd give it a go. If ten households joined in it would be worth it, within a day there were over forty.
In the end there were over 100 households who have had their picture taken by myself, Charlotte Black and Shruta and Kartik Patel who kindly volunteered to help reach all those who wanted to take part when I was getting a bit overwhelmed.
It soon became apparent that the more immediate value of a family portrait in front of the house was another benefit of this lockdown project particularly as many don't have such a picture (we didn't). The world on pause meant that households were all at home at the same time and those elusive times when everyone is together could happen much more easily.
The Exhibition and archive
I raised money to have the pictures printed by selling engraved Great Paxton 1020-2020 items and Christmas decorations from the Christmas lights switch-on event last year, so a big thank you to anyone who purchased anything and helped this happen.
The exhibition took place in September 2021 during the weekend of the Scarecrow Festival.
Some of the pictures
