Our Archive
The Colchester Recalled collection was recorded on cassette tapes until 2005, thereafter they were recorded on digital SIM cards. There are also a few CDs (which are all digital), mostly of recorded talks. The entire collection has now been digitised onto computer hard drive. Since all the cassettes have two sides this produces two audio files numbered, say, 1299 A and 1299 B
Numbers have been allocated in the categories listed below.
Where an interview extends to several sessions (or cassettes) it is numbered as 2560-1, 2560-2, 2560-3 etc.
- 0001-0055 Early tapes, mostly dating from the 1970s, predating the formation of Colchester Recalled in 1988. They are a mix of very short interviews and 'outside broadcasts'.
- 0200-0218 Interviews with local butchers (now all gone).
- 0250-0270 Music in Colchester.
- 0400-0450 Employees of Paxman's Engineers.
- 0500-0515 'Mersea Island Discs’ Recordings.
- 0600-0630 Essex Agriculture.
- 0700-0790 Residents of Fordham.
- 0800-0850 Theatre In Colchester.
- 0900-Employees of Kent, Blaxhill
- 0950-0966 Employees of Hunt’s of Earls Colne.
- 1000-1500 Some 'outside broadcasts' but mostly recorded talks about Colchester & District.
- 1500-1570 The Great & Good. Whole life interviews conducted in 1988-89 with prominent figures in Colchester.
- 1571-1580 Post-war National Service.
- 1600-1700 Interviews and Outside Broadcasts conducted in 1992 with American airmen present in this area in World War II.
- 1700-1750 Recordings about Life in Essex in World War II.
- 1750-1760 Recordings about work in Colchester libraries.
- 1800-1850 Interviews about the Colchester & District Co-Op.
- 1850-1900 Recordings about local evacuation in World War II.
- 1900-1999 Interviews of staff working in the local Heath Services. continued as 7000-7200.
- 2000-3000 Whole Life recordings of local people. A few include the topics listed above.
- 3500-3550 Ghurkhas in Colchester.
- 8000-8200 Wivenhoe Recordings.
- 9000-9030 Creating Women's Refuges in Essex and East London.
The long task of digitising all the cassettes
Summaries of Interviews
We aim to complete a summary or transcript of each recording, such as those illustrated on the What We Do page.
Currently most summaries only exist as hard copies, but digital WORD transcripts exist for about 400 recordings. Summaries or transcripts exist for these series: 0001+ Early Tapes, 0600+ Essex Agriculture, 1500+ Great & Good, 1700+ Essex at War, 1850+ Evacuation in WW2, 2000+ Whole Life interviews, 8000+ Wivenhoe interviews.
Virtually no talks or outside broadcasts (the 1000 series) or Paxman (0400+), Mersea (0500+) or Fordham (0700+) have summaries yet.
Our Digital Index
As the number of our recordings have grown to over 3,500 we have had to develop a very advance digital index. All the interviewees are listed numerically in their categories from 0001 to 8525 followed by the essential details: their name, date of birth, occupation, date of recording, name of interviewer, type of summary and a short description of what the recording talks about. Each of these 3,500-long columns are word searchable so you can check (for example) all the interviewees who were shopkeepers, or were over 80 years old etc, etc.
Working on the Colchester Recalled digital Index, colour-coded to show the type of summary\transcript.
Basic details of recording numbers 2255, 2256-1, 2256-2, 2257-1.