Category: Volunteers

I’ve spent a lot of time examining documents illustrating the development of Polish community in Britain in the last century. Amongst hundreds of documents, I found a few that really interested me.

Our project is moving into the second stage and for that we need YOU! Are you Polish or have a Polish connection in your family. We want to hear your family’s story of migration. Polish people make up 5% of the Waltham Forest population. But not everyone with Polish blood came over to the UK … Continued

Love stories? Love history? Then join our oral history training on 16th September to unlock some of Waltham Forests best kept secrets. Memory is a strange beast – it can be altered, mislead and suppressed. But none of that means it isn’t true in the mind of the individual, or any less fascinating. These are … Continued

I visited “Sikorski Museum and Insitute” for the first time on 6th March 2014. I was truly overwhelmed by the size of its archives and fantastic assistance of Jadwiga Kowalska – Deputy Keeper of the Archives. I spent the entire day working through the private collection of Krystyn Lach Szyrma who was a professor of … Continued

A great visit to the Metropolitan Archives with Jane, Pat and Grando, an absolute treasure trove stacked floor to ceiling with history and discoveries from past times.  We were shown around and guided through the archives by Marta Lomza, Development Officer for the Met Archives. Marta showed us fragile, delicate posters / invitations and hand … Continued

I visited University of East London Archives with Jane and Julia on 18th Feb 2014. We were very kindly guided in our research by a very nice archivist called Paul. I had a rare chance to listen to a series of interviews with residents of East London. They shared their views on ever changing East … Continued

At the LMA conference on 28th March we discovered, through conversation with other participants, that St Patrick’s Catholic Cemetery in Langthorne Road, E11 contains the graves of a number of Polish Catholic priests. A quick on-line search also revealed possible evidence of other Polish graves, often indicating WW2 killed in action. On visiting the cemetery, … Continued

Following our visit to the LMA on 31st January this year, Marta Lomza the very helpful and well-informed archivist (even more so as she is of Polish heritage herself!), generously arranged complimentary tickets to the above event. There was a cross section of about 50 participants, some of whom were clearly there out of fascination … Continued