Stories about Sutton-in-the-Isle, Cambridgeshire, UK
Archive for Stories
October 18, 2009 at 9:32 pm · Filed under Activities, How we made this and tagged: how-to, listen, Stories
Sutton Grapevine was not about access to technology but about using physical activities and online technologies to reveal the texture of life in the village. It was an experimental project using a variety of media to reveal the flavour of the life, place and identity in a rural village undergoing change. One of the aims of Sutton Grapevine was not to present solutions, but to explore and illuminate the issues; and in particular to demonstrate the role of cultural space and cultural activity in enabling that process to take place.
Sutton Grapevine is an example of what could be done by local people using readily available medias and transferrable techniques. In the process we’ve gathered stories through interviews and chance encounters, running workshops and events, conducting interviews, attending clubs and groups, visiting events, working with a youth group, organising a BBQ, exploring the local area by bike, foot and car, staging an exhibit in the Babylon Gallery Ely and through suttongrapevine.org. We heard talk of Winston Churchill’s uncle, Clement Freud’s first election to Parliament and rumours of Princess Margaret. There were tales of Sutton schoolteachers and flying blackboard rubbers, of lying at the end of the Mepal airfield runway watching the bombers take off and of elusive landlords; from ice skating on the Hundered foot Drain down at Sutton Gault to the day the Sutton Tandoori came to town: from being squashed by cows, rampant bulls and one legged milking stools to duck races, inland tides, kayaking on the river, homebaking and how four years of dedication and careful archaeology revealed an ancient burial urn.
We have met with many people and been grateful for the generous welcome we have been given. The stories gathered are available on line and as an archived on an audio cd and the story of the project is available as an eBook to download print and make up. A number of these will be distributed throughout the village and Proboscis will continue to maintain Sutton Grapevine as a project site.
October 18, 2009 at 9:29 pm · Filed under Activities, How we made this, Stories and tagged: how-to, podcast, Stories
When we began the project our initial research was based on visits to Sutton to make contact with people and to get an impression of life in the village and we were greatly supported by the Feast Committee. We investigated the different communities that live in the village as well as the history and landscape of the area and people’s relationship to it. For two reasons it was important to us to begin the project by getting to know Sutton and its inhabitants. Firstly an essential aspect to working in a community is to establish trust, and secondly we were concerned that the project we undertook should fit into current activities. We began by making a number of visits to Sutton to meet and talk to people there and to get an impression of life in the village. During our visits we spoke with many people who have a wide range of roles within the village. We found that Sutton has a strong identity for residents who make a clear distinction from other villages nearby. Residents we spoke to told us that the village had recently undergone an increase in its commuter population. A few times people mentioned the planned development of Sutton which would increase the population. We made connections with a range of people including the Triangle Club, a group of elderly residents, the Youth Club, the WI, the Feast Committee, the Parish Council, St Andrews Church, the Curry Clubs, local business people, farmers, commuters and other individuals, and over the year undertook many activities including:
Babylon Gallery Exhibit: We set up a map and postcards to collect visitors’ stories for Sutton Grapevine and promote the project. People were encouraged to write or draw their stories and pin them down on the map, or record them. Through this we connected with two villagers who then went on to record a series of wonderful stories for the project that can be hear on this site.
Sutton Seniors Youth Group: We worked with the group on a session using a large map of Sutton and to map – with the help of string, paper, storycubes and modeling clay – what is in Sutton now and what people might like to see in Sutton in the future and recorded the groups stories of what they had created. After this we all decided to work together on some low tech animation asking the question “What is Sutton like?”
Triangle Club: We met the Triangle Club for seniors on two afternoons, mapping their memories of Sutton, and recording and listening to stories of people, spaces and events that marked their lives.
Tea Dance: We set up a table with a map outside the Tea Dance at the Glebe and used the map to start conversations and record a series of memories and stories as people left the Tea Dance.
BBQ at Painters Lane: A villager and her family kindly offered their home and garden to be used to host a BBQ for residents of Painters Lane who had a wealth of stories about Sutton to share, how they came to be in Sutton, how the Lane has changed, life in the village as a commuter, what there is (or isn’t) for young people.
One-stop shop: We set up a table with a large map outside the one stop shop on a couple of occasions to entice the steady flow of people on a Saturday morning to stop and to record stories.
Election Day: An evening spent outside Sutton Polling Station gathering stories around a map during election day.
Curry Clubs: We were lucky enough join the Ladies Curry Club and visit the mens Curry Club to gather stories. As well as describing life in Sutton the recordings give an insight into the experiences that are Sutton Curry nights.
Allotments: We visited Sutton allotments and recorded stories from two holders. Many people grow their own food in Sutton and the issue of food and where to buy it often came up in conversation.
Feast Week 2009: We exhibited Sutton Grapevine at the annual Feast. There was be a display and audio in St Andrews Church and we joined various Feast Events. We also held a wee Tea and Cakes afternoon for some residents who had contributed.
School Fete: We set up a Sutton Grapevine station at the School Fete during the Feast, and invited children to cut out and make felt pictures of their stories of Sutton. We asked them to tell us what they had made and recorded their replies on Gabcast.
You can hear edited excerpts from all the above including from the many conversations we recorded with individuals on this site.
October 18, 2009 at 9:05 pm · Filed under Activities, How we made this and tagged: podcast, Stories, technologies
Sutton Grapevine was not about access to technology but about using physical activities and online technologies to reveal the texture of life in the village. Where we’ve used technologies they’ve been those that people already use or could easily adopt:
suttongrapevine.org; is a free WordPress Blog. We use podbean a free podcasting service where we upload audio files to our account on podbean, and the most recent podcasts automatically appear on the this blog. Gabcast; is a low cost service that lets people record a story over the phone. The recordings were automatically uploaded to Gabcast and later linked to this blog. The strength of Gabcast is that no internet connection is required and the cost was low. But it is difficult to tell stories into a telephone so it seems to work best as part of organised activities. AudioBoo allows iPhone users to make short digital recordings with photographs which can be posted online. It was used by the team to make short recordings around the village from time to time. Twitter is a free social networking and micro-blogging service that enables people to post and read short notices that appeare immediately on the website as well as being were delivered to subscribers. Its immediacy makes it work well in ad hoc situations. As a result of twitter we gathered additional stories about the area.
Recordings were made on a variery of equipment spanning price ranges including £10 voice recorders; a Sony Minidisk Recorder and mic; an iPod, an iPhone and a Marantz digital audio recorder. Audio was later edited in Garageband. The Marantz is a professional recorder but looks a bit like an old fashioned tape recorder so people barley notice it which we found to be invaluable as people are often a put off by a microphone being pointed at them. The iPod Classic and iPhone are both easy to use but the battery life is short with the iPod and sound levels are not as high as with the Marantz. The minidisk and mic is good quality easy to use and economical choice though it is not digital. We also used some small digital audio recorders by Olympus which were very handy.
October 18, 2009 at 8:37 pm · Filed under Activities, How we made this and tagged: how-to, listen, podcast, Stories
Proboscis were commissioned in 2008 by ADeC (Arts Development in East Cambridgeshire) to “create a space where local residents have the room to explore place and identity through creative activity that is based in both the physical world and on-line. That has an existence in the real world and virtual spaces.” In response to this we created Sutton Grapevine.
In Sutton Grapevine the exploration of place and identity focused on stories; personal stories, stories of place, fictional and factual stories, stories told through words, through images, through sound.
Over the last year we have been gathering stories through about life in Sutton through interviews and chance encounters, running workshops and events, conducting interviews, attending clubs and groups, visiting events, working with the youth group, a BBQ, exploring the local area by bike, foot and car, staging an exhibit in the Babylon Gallery Ely and through this website.
We worked with both groups and individuals in different situations. With groups we joined existing community group sessions but we also set up specific activities with groups such as three sessions with the youth group or the barbeque. We also organised more ad hoc sessions to engage passers by such as being outside the shop, in the tithe sale and at the school fete. We met people in the day and into the evening. We also set up two exhibits as a catalyst for conversation, one early on at the Babylon Gallery and one during the Feast. We had conversations in the Glebe, the Church, the Community Room, and other community spaces, at the school fete, in the street, outside the shop, in the pub and with individuals in their homes, at work and outside.
In many cases we set up a table with a large map of the Sutton and asked people to write on post-it notes their memories and thoughts about the village, places they knew or events they remembered, we used this to begin conversations about life in Sutton. The post its became a catalyst for more conversations as other people stopped to read them. We also used triggers to start conversations such as postcards that we had made of the village and historical documents and images loaned by a villager. We have met with many groups and individuals and been grateful for the warm welcome we have been given. We have never ceased to be inspired by how hard people work for their community as volunteers. In many ways large and small we felt that the stories of Sutton seemed to be a microcosm of the stories of the UK.
July 1, 2009 at 11:44 pm · Filed under Activities, Stories and tagged: Stories, Youth Group
In our final session with the seniors Youth Group we spent a fast two hours making a short low tec, stopframe animation answering the question “what is Sutton like?”
alright! from Proboscis on Vimeo.
July 1, 2009 at 2:10 am · Filed under Activities, How we made this, Stories and tagged: allotment, Food, Fruit, harvest, Plant, Stories, sutton-in-the-isle, Vegetables
During our stay near Sutton in June I was lucky to be invited, by Roger, to visit one patch of Sutton allotments. He explained to me how the allotments had grown more popular in recent years after a small group had got together and reinvigorated them. Now the number of holders has grown from a handful to over 30. You can read about then on the allotments website. It was fantastic to see Roger’s inspirational allotment, taste some of its just ripened strawberries and see and hear about the huge range of what people are growing. You can hear a list of one allotment holders summer crop on the podcast section of this website with more allotment stories to come… If you are growing things in Sutton send something about it to the grapevine – what else are people growing?
When I first got to know Sutton I had thought it ironic that here on the fens, breadbasket of England, the food from the large farms heads off to the supermarkets and not into the village where, these days, there is no greengrocer anyway. So its been inspiring to meet so many people who grow and share their own in gardens and allotments as well as all the honesty shops where I enjoyed picking up baby beetroot among other things.
June 29, 2009 at 9:42 pm · Filed under Activities, Stories and tagged: BBQ, Food, fun, neigbours, Stories
Kennedy Hunns and her family kindly offered their home and garden to be used to host a BBQ for all the residents of Painters Lane. Unfortunately, it was a busy weekend and quite a number of the Lane residents were unable to join us for the afternoon. But those who were there, had a wealth of stories about Sutton to share, how they came to be in Sutton, how the Lane has changed, life in the village as a commuter, what there is (or isn’t) for young people…
It was a lovely afternoon and luckily it didn’t rain.
Several of the neighbours who were unable to attend left old documents – minutes from General Meetings – St Andrews Guild, Sutton from 1931 up to 1996; old posters / newspaper cuttings from the area; a fossilised shell from one of the gardens; and deeds and legal documents from 1800s.
It was great to see all this information being shared among neighbours – could be the first of many Lane parties…
June 19, 2009 at 2:02 pm · Filed under Activities, How we made this, Stories and tagged: Drainage, Hill, House prices, Ladies Curry Club, Moving to Sutton, podcast, Sack trolley, Stories, Sutton Tandoori
A closed-looking Sutton Tandoori, site of the LCC
When I was in Sutton recently I was lucky enough to go for dinner with the Ladies Curry Club. Obviously I can’t tell you all of what went on as the ladies need to preserve their mystery, but I can tell you that they were good enough to let me record their answers to some questions about Sutton. I’ve just uploaded three of these recordings to the podcast section of this website with many more to come. As well as describing how these ladies came to end up living in Sutton, I hope the recordings will give you a little insight into the fabulous experience that is Sutton Ladies Curry night..
June 5, 2009 at 2:44 pm · Filed under Activities, How we made this, Stories and tagged: Pavilion, Stories
Orlagh canvassing stories
Orlagh and I spent yesterday afternoon outside Sutton Polling Station at the Pavilion where a constant stream of voters entertained us with stories of Sutton in the past and present. We heard talk of Winston Churchill’s uncle, Clement Freud’s first election to Parliament and rumours of Princess Margaret. There were tales of Sutton schoolteachers and flying blackboard rubbers, of lying at the end of the Mepal airfield runway watching the bombers take off and of elusive landlords.
Our map of Sutton and collected stories
One of the questions we asked was ‘Where do you go in Sutton to meet people?’ The most popular answers were ‘dog walking on the fens’ and ‘the pub’ while the surgery and the bus stop also got mentions. It wasn’t all positive though and several people told us that once your children leave school it can be difficult to meet people and that Sutton can be ‘clique-y’.
There was one moment when two men who stopped by the map to read the stories and tell me about Clement Freud, the old train line and the house they used to live in, discovered that they had been at school together back in the 1940′s! As one of them put it.. “I wouldn’t have recognised you!” For me, it was just great that the Grapevine had restored old connections.
May 19, 2009 at 10:44 am · Filed under Do You Remember?, Stories and tagged: dialect, Stories
What memories do people have of the old fen words that are now not used? I can only think of SLUB = MUD, DOCKY = MID-MORNING SNACK, and TRAWLING = CATCHING BIRDS IN NETS.
These came from my dad, who died in 2002 aged 93, so I don’t know when they died out of use. In the 70s he always took cold black tea to drink with his docky, and the trawling was something the boys did when he was young, so that would be in the very early 20th century.
Are there any more words out there?
Judy Ballanger
May 11, 2009 at 11:09 pm · Filed under Contributing Your Story and tagged: postcard, Stories
Tell us a story....
We’ve just finished our second postcard to keep people up to date with what’s happening with the project, ways they can see and listen to stories collected so far and the various ways you can upload or send your own story to become part of the Sutton-in-the-Isle grapevine. The image is a detail of the Sutton map after a recent session with people from the Triangle Club and their input into places and the stories relating to them.
Look out for the new postcard around Sutton from next week. We look forward to many new stories being added….
April 29, 2009 at 2:11 pm · Filed under Activities, Contributing Your Story and tagged: Babylon Gallery, Stories
We stopped at the Babylon Gallery in Ely last Tuesday on our way to Sutton. We set up to start collecting visitors’ stories for Sutton Grapevine and the surrounding Fenlands. So if you are in Ely, pop into the Gallery, enjoy the artwork and share some of your Fenland memories with us. You can write or draw your stories and pin them down on the map, or record them, just ask one of the Gallery staff.
April 14, 2009 at 12:47 pm · Filed under Stories and tagged: farm, harvest, Stories
I was born in Sutton in 1950 and although it has grown, I still love the friendly and relaxed feeling I get as I walk around.
My Father, John Charles Robinson (to differentiate him from his dad, John Willie and his cousin, Walter John,) had a farm on the Earith Road. It was called Between Ditches and included fields like “The Chainground,” on Chain Corner, where there was formerly a pub, and “Rose Sawyer.”
Mr Bill Jupp lived in the cottage on the farm, with no sanitation or electricity and a huge pile of eggshells one side of the fireplace, with his armchair on the other.
The drove down there to the farm was very long and bumpy in our Austin A30. My dad kept pigs, hens, young Herefords and a huge carthorse called Boxer. Sitting on Boxer’s back was like sitting on the dining table, with my legs out flat either side.
I remember the old binder, used to cut corn in the 1950s, with Boxer pulling the machine, then the Fordson Major tractor, very innovative, and old combine harvester, a Massey Ferguson that left my dad and George Peacock who worked for him covered in dust and straw.
Harvest did not start until we were back at school in September and one farmer used to thresh the corn in a field next to “Top Class” which was good fun as a distraction from lessons. He used an old threshing machine with lots of exposed belts and pulleys everywhere, with men at the bottom throwing stooks up to be caught by men at the top.
My dad took cold tea for “docky”, a snack, every day and drove the tractor home for lunch.
He also drove the tractor to Ely RAF Hospital when he had put his fingers into the combine when it was stuck. Of course his fingers were then stuck and he managed to pull them out, bound them up, drove the tractor and yes, he did lose the ends.
The village had more shops and pubs then but there was so little traffic that we could walk down the middle of the road to the bus stop.
I remember doing just this and slipping and sliding down the hill near the present Bellairs turning during the hard winter of 1963. That was the only year that our school buses arrived early to take us home – by all of 10 minutes.
The Hamence brothers had a farmyard over the road from our house and used to drive the cows over for milking, at 9 am and 9 pm daily, with no problems!
There were far more open spaces and smallholdings along the High Street and I guess down the lanes as well. We ourselves kept around 100 rabbits and a pet mallard duck in our back yard, along with the outside cat and a tortoise, who was always trying to escape.
Our back yard had a row of ancient sheds in which we later found 2 pine fireplaces, since put into use in houses, enough bits to build a man’s bike, and loads of tractor parts and nameless bits of tools. There was the former “dunny” at the end of the path and the mangle shed where I do remember my mother mangling the washing, in about 1958.
It was a great place to grow up as we could play out freely. Birds-nesting down the Gault, climbing trees in The Row, Pond-dipping at Stankers Pond, hanging out in The Greenhills – all happy memories for me.
Social life? I remember Mrs. Neal and the Girl Guides. Mrs Smith taught me to play the piano, but I was hopeless. Nevertheless I did have to play a duet, with Janet Stimpson, at a concert in the Gault hut, in about 1959. Bill Read had his banjo and it turned into a barn dance – lots of loud laughter!
We had our own stories about the village, like the ghost story of the broken tomb beside the church that we knew a spectral hand had been seen to come out from, holding a Bible. Then we knew there was a tunnel from The Burystead to Ely Cathedral, but despite much wall tapping, we never did find it. We knew The America was so called because it was west of the village, and because its first inhabitants had emigrated to the USA. Lovely to have such certainties!
Judy Ballanger
April 7, 2009 at 12:21 pm · Filed under Contributing Your Story and tagged: Stories
We’ve set up a place online where you can tell us stories about Sutton. You can tell us about anything you like but if you need inspiration then here are some suggestions:
Who was the first person you met in Sutton?
How did you end up in Sutton?
Tell us about a place in Sutton you feel you belong to.
What was your first experience of Sutton?
Who was the last person you met in Sutton?
Where do you go in Sutton when you want to be with people?
What is the most fun you’ve had in Sutton?
Where was your first home in Sutton?
Just follow this link..
Go on.. you know you want to…!
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