My deepest thanks goes to all who came along yesterday.
I have now uploaded some of the images I took. Sadly my camera was playing up so they are not as sharp as normal.
If you attended the meet and have images please do email them to me.
You can see the images near the bottom of our Multimedia page.
Tom Sykes
Tomorrow a select group of Aux Unit members and historians will meet at Coleshill House along with Tom and a film crew to capture thoughts and memories of Coleshill on film.
The trip which has been organised by the Coleshill House Community Project, has been set up in order to obtain video footage for this website and also any future possible broadcasts about Coleshill.
A series of short films will be produced by Goldeneye Creative after the trip and these will be uploaded to the site.
The CHCP would like to thank the National Trust for all their help with this ongoing project as well as John Fry from Fry Films for providing filming services.
Today we added a personal account of the house fire in 1952 and memories playing in the grounds by Des Williams.
Des contacted us after seeing us on the BBC locally and wanted to contribute to the site.
You can read his story here.
You can now comment on our diary and blog pages.
If you read a blog you like and want to contribute to then click on the title of the blog and scroll down to the white box below “Add New Comment”.
You can leave a message as a guest or sign up so you get notified when others respond to your posts. If you don’t register (free by the way) it will ask you if you want to. Below this it says “Click this step and post my comment as a guest”
so click there.
Try it with this blog and see what I have said…
Simple…..
Like all small projects and community groups we need to raise funds to keep the group going. This website and the community project are not funded by anyone so we have decided to add some small revenue streams on this page.
The books and items are all related to our cause and we would suggest you read them even if we weren’t selling them. If you know of a book or DVD we have missed or would like to help fund us please email us
If any money is raised in this way we will use to towards building the site and adding more video and information.
As you all know this site is run without any funding. As a web designer and working from home, I am able to do the updates and dedicate time to it around my normal paid work.
The National Trust at Coleshill do offer guided walks around the site a few times a year and I would like to produce a postcard sized flyer that they can give to guests to promote our website.
I am appealing for anyone that might have connections in the printing world where we can get these printed for free.
I am also interested to discuss with anyone how we might go about raising some funding to continue the project. Not for wages but for buying leaflets and pamphlets etc that are not available at a Library.
All ideas are welcome.
Tom Sykes
In my search for more video footage I have found “The Real Dad’s Army” on the internet. I am sure many of you have either been in it or watched it but here it is again.
The final film of the series examines Britain’s secret resistance army, codenamed the Auxiliary. It features Bob Millard and lots of footage of Coleshill including the bunker. Watch it here
Today we filmed an interview for BBC Oxford TV Evening News. We only had two minutes to talk and condensing the history of the Aux Units and Coleshill into that time was tough. The BBC did make some mistakes in what they had researched but the mistakes are worth the coverage we feel.
Straight after filming the Presenter suggested we went on BBC Radio Oxford and we were taken into the radio studios.
Within two minutes Tom was sat in the studio and talking to Bill Heine LIVE.
The interview was a lot longer, about 7 minutes, and allowed Tom to cover all areas of the house etc.
You can see the TV and hear the radio interview here and on our Multimedia Page
Once again Coleshill House is going to be discussed on the BBC.
This time it will be on TV on BBC Oxford’s Evening News tomorrow night (Friday 14th August) between 6:30pm and 7pm.
I am going to be talking about the project and although we have been given a tiny window we may appear on another programme later in the year.
If you live outside of the Oxford area and have SKY you can watch it on sky channel 985.
We will try to get a copy of it on the site over the next week.
Tom Sykes
We are now looking for a Screen Writer to help us turn our research into a TV drama or Documentary Please see more here