WFOHW has been collecting material since 1983 and now has more than 500 recordings. Though the Workshop is an independent voluntary group, since its inception it has had a close relationship with the Vestry House Museum, Walthamstow - the local studies museum and archive for the London Borough of Waltham Forest. Our recordings are stored there and available for public use by appointment.

When we began we used some of the best and worst equipment available at the time, but there are more than 400 audio cassettes in the Vestry House archive which are of varying quality and only accessible at the museum by appointment. We now record digitally using flash memory cards and quality has certainly improved since 1983; all recordings since March 2003 have been digitised on accession to the collection.

Our digitisation programme has started and is likely to take until the end of 2010.

The Workshop’s principal work is through the unfunded voluntary group and resources are always limited.

This is a regularly updated database of recordings made by WFOHW since 1983, and including some other recordings made by Vestry House Museum since 1970.

The original recordings and interview records are not online, and at present can only be consulted at Vestry House, Walthamstow. Details in the database include:

• recording number
• records of interview
• content
• date of interview
• date of birth.

Use the Search function in your browser to find the data you need.

Go to the Index.