Learning to live with lockdown A deserted Monsal Trail (Emily Bowyer-Kazadi)
NATALIE WARD, Senior Conservation Archaeologist at the Peak District National Park, reflects on a difficult period for those working in the heritage sector
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Parwich History Society on a survey
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he past couple of years were challenging for our region’s heritage and all those involved in the voluntary and professional spheres. From cancelled events to closed sites and museums; a wholesale shift to home working to introducing Covidsafe site working procedures; cancelling site visits and fieldwork projects, to finding new ways to engage with our audiences, the challenges of 2020 and 2021 have meant we have had to find new ways of working and embracing the new opportunities these present. In fact, the Derbyshire County Council and Peak District National Park heritage teams felt busier than ever. Having quickly adapted to home working, we found ourselves facing a greatly increased workload of planning applications and having to deal with the effects of higher visitor numbers on some of our more popular heritage sites. In this feature, people working in and involved in
ACID | 2022
heritage across Derbyshire and Peak District reflect on their experiences of lockdown and the Covid restrictions, and what they have meant for them, their organisation, their work and their projects. Sarah Chubb, Archives and Local Studies Manager at the Derbyshire Record Office Although Derbyshire Record Office had to close to the public for long periods over 2020-2021, we resumed our copying and research service after the first lockdown ended, so customers didn’t lose out altogether. We have now reopened although with limited numbers and booking in advance. It’s been interesting having to rethink how we offer our public service – but it’s given us the opportunity to try out new ways of doing things which we think will make things run a little smoother in the future. Even though staff had to work from home during lockdown, we had plenty to keep us busy including adding 3,300 local studies and 13,800 archive records to our online catalogue. We also had a bumper year for online usage with 8.8 million page views and over 233,000 users. We have now introduced online events and are planning more digital work in the future, including more exhibitions on Google Arts and Culture. Follow our blog (recordoffice.wordpress.com) or Twitter (@FranklinArchive) for the latest information about what’s happening at the Record Office. Fiona Hadfield, Parwich History Society Lockdown hit Parwich just as the history society was contemplating progress on a project to explore the origins of the village. We were keen to find out whether there was any possibility that the lower part of the village was established on an Anglo-Saxon platform. This theory had been mooted by some members of the society over the years, and a small amount of geophysical exploration which had been carried out the previous summer as part of a village Archaeology Day led us to believe further work was justified. Lockdown however meant that we were restricted in
