Meet Our Networkers in South West England
Covering: Cornwall, Devon, Dorset, Gloucestershire, Somerset, Wiltshire

Garry Tregidga

Marilyn Tucker

John Burgess

Regional Networker
John Burgess
On reflection my involvement with oral history began, albeit unwittingly, when I was given a reel to reel tape recorder as a present for my fourteenth birthday. I fondly remember my first ‘interview’ when I recorded my grandmother recalling her childhood memories in her beautiful soft Somerset voice. From an even earlier age I became fascinated with tape recording from watching on black and white T.V. how the BBC made radio programmes. This fired my childhood imagination and an old shoe box became my make believe tape recorder attached to a long piece of string tied to a stick which was my microphone. This early fascination with sound recording led eventually to me joining the BBC and many wonderful years in radio, working on both sides of the microphone. When I retired from the BBC and reluctant to ‘hang up the microphone’ I joined the OHS, immersed myself in oral history – and I love it! As an OHS regional networker in the south west I am privileged to be involved with numerous wonderful oral history projects – many over the years and I am delighted to offer my help, advice and training to anyone or any group embarking on oral history.
Posts from South West England

Women Listening to Women: An Oral History of the Bristol Crisis Service for Women
A new oral history project uncovers the hidden history of the Bristol Crisis Service for Women, set up as a feminist collective in the 1980s and still going strong.

Forest Oral Histories
Important social history archive now available at Dean Heritage Centre. Collection of 200 fascinating oral history recordings spanning 20th century life in the Forest of Dean

‘We Are Still Here’: Our Journey
How interviewing individuals from the HIV-community within their own living spaces was a learning curve for the researchers themselves.
Oral history in the South West in 2020
South West Region (Garry Tregidga) For 2019-2020 Oral History featured prominently in the Eglosyow Morek Kernow (Cornish Maritime Churches) project that was funded through the Young Roots scheme of the former Heritage Lottery. A team of young