On Radio 4 today from 12.45 we heard Sheila Dillon return to her Domesday Square around Hoghton in Lancashire.
The dairy farm at which she used to work in the holidays, the lack of public housing available since 1986, much has changed in 25 years. While looking for a paper mill and a wine wholesaler listed in Domesday, she runs into a chap who remembers doing the original project at school and now works at a steel foundry.
Yesterday Mark Lawson described what 25 years of supporting Leeds United feels like, whilst tomorrow Paddy O’Connell returns to Aberdeen. Richard Coles and Jane Garvey complete the quintet this week.
Domesday Reloaded: Me and My Squareis proving a fascinating series. Do check it out on iPlayer if you can't catch R4 at lunchtimes. You can also see pictures of each trip at the You & Yours site.
And don’t forget you’ve got until 31st of October to update Your Square…
Next week on Radio 4, "Domesday Reloaded: Me and My Square" airs daily from 12.45.
Five Radio 4 presenters have returned to their Domesday Squares - those which hold especially mid-eighties significance for them, and have expored the changes (or not) of those neighbourhoods.
I've just enjoyed hearing a long trail for the series - you can catch it on today's You and Yours (probably sometime in the second half, my sources suggest...) and hear of a young Mark Lawson being told off in no uncertain terms for running across wet concrete.
What a picture...
In small writing on the inside of the 1986 Domesday Disc box it says:
"For more information look up 'Domesday' on the National Disc."
If you do that, you are presented with an essay by the Project's Editor, Peter Armstrong. I present it here as a pdf.
As a moment in the history of media technology I think it's of some importance. What do you think?
It refers to a lot of things on the National Disc which we haven't been able to present as part of Domesday Reloaded.
The Domesday Discs may be the last to be produced in this way. This is because they are primarily intended as historical records. A comprehensive home and institutional knowledge base kept up to date by datacasting techniques will be a different step, but one that I personally hope that, as a result of the Domesday Project, the BBC and others will want to explore.
If you get a chance this summer, it is well worth getting along to some of the museums and institutions that still have working Domesday systems, and having a nose round the National Disc.
(By the Way, we hope to be able to offer more of the professionally written essays from the National Disc over coming weeks as we approach the culmination of Domesday Reloaded).
