Why and how we wrote “Spotlights on the history of Sturmer”

I seem to recall that at a retirement seminar held at work for those of us approaching retirement, the most popular choice for “ things I want to do” was join a choir and write a book. After I retired, I joined a choir and sang with them for 10 years until 2024.

I also formed a local history group with my WI friend, Jo Porth at the end of 2011.  We started to build up an archive in the village hall starting with some files she had collected over the years and her local knowledge.  She has lived in Sturmer for over 50 years now.

We obtained an “All Our Stories” grant and set up a heritage trail around the village with the help of about 20 other residents. As part of this project we held Victorian Schoolroom Re-enactments for local primary school children, visited historical places and workshops, held open archive days and exhibitions, added our history group to Twitter (now X), placed articles in our village newsletter and produced a leaflet of the trail. We also started a website and we were content with that and our leaflet until early 2025.

Seeing another village website disappear to be replaced with a Facebook page got me thinking. It occurred to me that when Jo and I (as the drivers of the group) were no longer updating the website through disease, dementia or death, our website would also drop off the internet. I printed off the webpages intending to add them to our archives so some record would still exist.  In doing so, it occurred to me that we had the skeleton of a book in those pages. Jo and I met a number of times to flesh out that skeleton and agree how to proceed.

We preferred to give a copy of the book free of charge to all residents so applied successfully for grants to Essex Heritage Trust and Suffolk Local History Council (SLHC) to add to our small funds.

We could not include everything we had found out so picked out some of the highlights which we find most interesting – hence “Spotlights” in the title. Finally, the book was printed in 2026 and distributed widely free of charge to residents of Sturmer, members of the local history group and a number of people who have helped the group over the years. We also sold a number of copies to interested people. I attended the SLHC conference to sell copies and some are still left for sale.

The book is aimed at the general reader and we hope it will interest the residents of the village and encourage them to care for it. I particularly like the review of the book by Zofia Everett who runs the Essex Records Office access point in Saffron Walden library:

“I have been reading  “Spotlights on the history of Sturmer” and wish other villages produced such a concise, well-researched and personal account of their villages.  The timeline section is concise and easy to follow and gives readers an idea of how ancient Sturmer is.  History of prominent houses and stories of former residents are also of great interest to local historians.  Thank you for this welcome addition to our local history collection.”

Sturmer Local History Group

23 October 2026