Trench Collection

Trench Collection

The ‘Trench Collection’ is a privately owned collection of Roll of Honour, Official and Unit Histories, posters postcards and other ephemera from the Great War period.  It is a pivotal aspect of the ‘Trench’ project and platform.

There are, currently, c. 350 items in the collection. Which amounts to c. 750,000 records of names of men and women who served their King and Country, in some capacity, during that period.

 

The Map sheet is a visual representation of that collection which has been divided into a basic genre classifications, e.g. Education, Organisation and Parish. It is hoped, that from this, people and groups can see the parts of the collections relevant to their areas. May be working with the data relevant to their groups / societies.

 

Aims

To double the collection to more than 600 items over the next 12/18 months.  It is, of course, hoped that this will allow the collection to total over 1,500,000 records of names.

 

Nick, (Owner of the ‘Trench Collection’) hopes to share all of the items, within the collection where not, of course, governed by any remaining Copyright.  He has made a start on digitising and transcribing, to a certain level, (in house QA and checking) about 20 Rolls of Honour; enabling the mapping, either to a relative or absolute position, of c. 75000 Names. These have come from Rolls such as, the National Union of Teachers, London County Council, Norfolk Roll, L&NWR, Driffield, Great Harwood and Woodford Green, to name a few.

 

It is hoped that the resulting Databases can be shared on a teared level in terms of both user accessibility and how it is represented.  Nick has come from a Geographical Information System background and sees the benefit in aligning all attribute data to a spatial reference.  All these records or small bios of the people within, are spatially referenceable… Their stories can be told on a map!

Nick will continue to do this, one man at a time, but he sincerely hopes that with the help of the community, it can be completed in the very near future.  With the help or as part of #PayHistoryForward and #CitizensHistory project collectives. Making it accessible on the Trench Platform as online DBs and interactive mapping.

Current community projects ideas include, Birmingham City Battalions Book of Honour, (242 companies that contain c. 20000 names. Also Photographs of the all Platoons in the 3 City Battalions), complete set of ‘The National Roll of the Great War’, 3 volumes of ‘The Roll of Honour’, ‘The V.C. and D.S.O’ and ‘Order of Battle’ Histories.