The East Bergholt Society promotes the History and Heritage of East Bergholt. It has been in existence for more than 40 years, in which time it has collected an array of hertitage materials, from old photographs to occupants' accounts of village life before the wars.
This web site project aims to make this history accessible to others by taking advantage of modern technology. A focus of the project has been its use of a "Google-Maps" style presentation, which, through the use of historical as well as modern maps, allows the history to be understood in terms of locations and the geography of the village.
The team that have worked together to develop this web site are as follows:
John Lyall: John is an eminent national architect with an eye for landscapes and history. John was responsible for leading the work on East Bergholt's Historic landscape Report, which is the original source document for our website. His expertise on the landscape and architecture of the village combined with his love of Constable gave the grounding the project needed to start.
Joan Miller: Before retirement Joan was responsible for Parliament's technology department, creating amongst other things, Parliament's websites. Joan is deeply involved in East Bergholt village life and by virtue of living here for 50 years has a bird's eye view of much recent history. Joan was responsible for project managing, which means she ran around everyone else trying to fill any gaps.
Nicki Reed: Nicki specialises in social media and printed literature and has developed a deep interest in researching the history of the village, from the connections with John Constable to the stories people tell of how it was to live in the village. Nicki was responsible for the huge amount of research which discovered over 180 Constable paintings and sketches of the village and matched them to locations, and for writing the majority of the content of the website.
Graham Reed: Graham is a marketing strategist and is famous for his walks through the village during the Covid lockdown with his dogs Mr Noodles and his best friend Wilfred, and producing a wonderful series of humorous photographs around the areas he walked. Grahams contribution to the site has been around messaging, a large percentage of the photography and the visual concepts featured on the core of the front page.
Clive Totman: Clive has made a big contribution to the research done by the team on Constable's locally based paintings. He has also been involved in local East Bergholt history and in the Dedham Vale conservation activities for many years and brought both his local and visual expertise to the project. Clive has been responsible for many of the visual concepts in the site, including the now and then transitions from Constable's paintings to the scene as it is today.
Rob Wombwell: Rob is a retired digital consultant who has worked on numerous IT projects, mostly in central Government. As the chief (and indeed the only) technical person on the team, Rob has been responsible for the original inspiration for the website and for the technical design and execution of the finished product. His innovative expertise and ability to crack technical problems is evident in all of its interesting features.
The team has also had help from many people through the EBSOC and other village institutions. Many thanks therefore to Joyce Baker, Simon Peachey (National Trust Flatford), Paul Ireland, Patricia & Peter Wright, Roy Toyne, Alicia Herbert, and the many others who got involved - including the team's long suffering spouses and partners who have put up with their obsessive behaviour in building this website.
And there is one other team presence we must thank....
The Invisible Team Member: Doubtless this gentleman would never have thought that his 100+ paintings and sketches of East Bergholt and Flatford would ever end up being catalogued and displayed on a hi-tech mapping website such as this. But we hope he'd approve nonetheless. Certainly we have found his work incredibly stimulating, and the more we have studied it, the more inspirational it has become. We believe that John Constable would certainly be pleased if visitors to this website were inspired to visit the village and be able to experience something of his vision - before the inexorable tide of concrete and tarmac developments cover the remainder of this lovely county of Suffolk.