Council marking VE day with online celebrations, and calls for local submissions to the county archive
With social gatherings not being possible for the 75th anniversary of VE Day on 8 May, Buckinghamshire Council has taken all its commemorations online. On the bank holiday Friday, Saturday, and Sunday, the council’s social media pages will be sharing stories, photos, videos – and even some special performances – to mark the day. There’s also resources and suggestions for how to mark the day in your community, safely, on the council website.
Budding local historians can now use some of the lockdown to research what life was like in the county during the war, thanks to online resources provided by the library service and Centre for Buckinghamshire Studies. Bombs over Bucks, is an interactive map showing where bombs were dropped in the county during the war, and you can also now access a range of national online resources using your Buckinghamshire library card – for example read contemporary accounts of VE Day, with Times Digital Archive or research the 1939 Register on Ancestry: see the A-Z directory of online resources on our website.
However, there’s still more to be learned about the history of Buckinghamshire in wartime. The Centre for Buckinghamshire Studies is appealing for family stories, memories, photos and documents connected to the Second World War, so that they can expand what is known about life in the county between 1939 and 1945.
Council Chairman Richard Scott added; “The role of the Centre is to collect, care for, and communicate the history of Buckinghamshire, and the public plays a vital role in that. Any submissions would be stored in the county archive, and possibly used by researchers and historians in the future. This is a really exciting opportunity for you to be part of local history, so please root around in your attics, your photo albums, or call your grandparents to see if they have memories of Buckinghamshire during the war. We’re wishing everyone a safe and peaceful VE Day 75 across the county, and thank those who gave so much.”
If you have something that you want to share get in touch with archives@buckinghamshire.gov.uk, and for more details about our VE Day plans, visit our website.