Richmond Park History Project

Richmond Park is a magnificent and historic open space in South West London, covering over 2,500 acres. The Richmond Park History Project is a collaboration between the Friends of Richmond Park (www.frp.org.uk) and The Hearsum Family, to create a digital resource relating to the history of the Park, and to put it to use for public benefit. It is a volunteer-led project: the Friends can tap into a wide range of talent.

Since 1997, Daniel Hearsum, who runs Pembroke Lodge in the park as a cafe and functions venue (www.pembroke-lodge.co.uk), has collected around 5,000 very varied objects relating to the history of the park: postcards, books, maps, prints, furniture, letters, domestic items and so on.

We are now cataloguing and digitizing this collection, and starting to produce public material based on it.

This eHive account is a pilot exercise in making our work available to everyone. We have started with the postcard collection - only 130 are public on the web as of 11th March 2011, although more will follow - we have catalogued over 400. The eHive records include the messages on the older cards - these range from the highly evocative to the mundane!

Go to http://dl.dropbox.com/u/1223047/RPHPGuide.pdf for some tips on searching this collection on eHive.

While we are making every effort to comply with copyright law, we will of course take prompt corrective action if infringements are pointed out.