WFOHW has been collecting its own material since 1983 and has recordings made by others from the 1970s; there are now more than 1000 recordings. Though the Workshop is an independent voluntary group, since its inception it has had a close relationship with the Vestry House Museum, Walthamstow – the local studies museum and archive for the London Borough of Waltham Forest – where our recordings are stored.
If you have recordings – perhaps from a project you ran, or from family or friends about aspects of life in Waltham Forest – we would be happy to take them into our archive and make them available for others to share. Contact us with details of what you have.
When we began we used some of the best and worst equipment available at the time, but there are more than 400 audio cassettes in the archive which are of varying quality. We now record digitally and quality has certainly improved since 1983; most more recent recordings have been digital on accession to the collection.
Our digitisation programme is now complete, with our paper records and all the historic cassette tapes stored digitally. The Workshop’s main activities are part of the unfunded voluntary group and resources are always limited.
Interview date: 09/04/2019
Interview date: 05/06/2017
Interview date: 16/03/2017
Interview date: 01/06/2017
Interview date: 24/04/2017
Interview date: 27/04/2017
Interview date: 13/10/2016
Interview date: 12/07/2017
Interview date: 16/03/2017
Interview date: 10/05/2017
Interview date: 21/07/2017
Interview date:
Interview date: 21/11/2019
Interview date: 20/01/2020
Interview date: 12/02/2020
This is a regularly updated database of recordings made by WFOHW since 1983, and including some other recordings made by Vestry House Museum since 1970.
If you would like to find out more about specific recordings, listen to them, or consult the paper records then contact us.
Use of our recordings is regulated by our Condition of Use; you can check these here.