Is it just me or are our heritage volunteers getting younger and younger ???
Recently 8 year old Violet and her mum and dad visited Tower Hamlets Cemetery Park where some of their more distant relatives are buried. Violet in particular became fascinated by the cemetery and quickly proved that she is quite an expert at reading some of the more difficult, badly worn inscriptions. Probably helped by her very young eyes ! She even came across one inscription with her name on it which really impressed her.
The whole family are very interested in researching their own family history, especially Violet’s great grand-father who fought in both the World Wars, tragically losing his life in the Second. Violet is helping her dad sort out the information about their ancestor’s life and it will hopefully be made into a book.
Violet has created a beautiful and very carefully researched display board commemorating the Battle of the Somme. It took a lot of hard work to research the ideas and the pictures on the Internet – the part Violet enjoyed the most ! Including faded, old looking paper and the luggage tags made the over-all design fit in perfectly with the 1916 date of the Somme.
Violet enjoyed the project so much that she is keen to take on more research and she will be choosing one of the 205 men commemorated on the Cemetery War Memorial who died in the Great War. She thinks she will chose one of the older men because there will be more to find out about his life and his family before he went off to the War.
Violet will be doing some more research for us over the summer holiday as well as visiting some of her favourite historical places, including Hampton Court Palace and reading lots of Horrible History books.