Castleford Heritage Project

Sheffield Hallam University worked alongside the charitable Castleford Heritage Trust with the intention of helping loval groups to develop bids to the Heritage Lottery Fund to enable them to investigate and portray key aspects of their local culture and heritage. We employed a combination of three well-attended Open Days and online points of contact to maximise participation, and eventually helped two established groups, the Friends of Fryston Wood and Fryston AFC, to successfully apply for support from the All Our Stories Fund. As a result, Fryston AFC worked with local secondary school pupils to produce a 40-minute DVD (‘Coal, Goals and Ashes’) to commemorate the fiftieth anniversary of the club’s historic victory in the 1963 final of the prestigious West Riding County Football Association Challenge Cup. Meanwhile, Friends of Fryston Wood worked alongside local primary schoolchildren and community enthusiasts to use video footage (of interviews and scenery) and archival material, such as photographs and newspaper aricles, as the basis of an online heritage archive of the wood and its adjoining communities. These initiatives have served to empower and inspire the group members concerned and infuse renewed pride among the wider community.