Cusop History Group AGM

I was at Cusop Village Hall on Friday evening for the Cusop History Group AGM.
There was a tent erected to the side of the main hall, over the picnic tables, which were being used to display lots of old maps of the area.

When the meeting started, Sue Hodgetts (last seen leading a parade of suffragettes) gave an overview of what had happened last year, and suggested that there should be no membership fee for the coming year because there's quite a bit of money in the bank account. This led to a discussion about whether it would be better to continue to collect a membership fee, so the Group could save up to fund a project such as a small dig at Cusop Castle. As no project is planned at present, though, the suggestion was that the committee should discuss the issue again and come back to the membership later. Talks will continue to cost around £3 each.
There was one large expenditure, of £150, last year, to have several maps encapsulated (I presume this is a means of preserving them) by HARC.
The Group presently has 53 members, though not all of them come to meetings. There were 21 people at the AGM. One of the members comes from Utah, but has family connections that they have been researching in the area. They found the Group via social media, which was also the route by which a pretty little prayer book came back to Cusop. It turned up in a charity shop in Devon, with the name L.G. Wheeler, Cusop Rectory in it - and research found that L.G. Wheeler was the vicar's wife in the late 1930s and into the war years. It's now part of the History Group Library.


Cusop Church is hosting a mini museum for the area, and there are several displays planned for it. There are also plans to cut back the undergrowth around the lime kiln up Cusop Dingle, which should be interesting. I will have to plan a walk up there sometime soon!

Various people who have been doing local research were invited to talk about what they have discovered so far by Denise, who has been co-ordinating the efforts. She was also the lady who organised the wonderful trip to the Ashmolean Museum in January. There is a shared group for research - for things that aren't quite ready for general publication, but may be useful for other researchers to look at - on the Cusop History Group shared drive.
The chap researching Victoria Terrace was very enthusiastic about what fun it is to find out things that you'd never expected, such as how exotic some 19th century names in the census are. There are also various projects which could be sub-divided, if anyone was willing to take on parts of them, such as the project involving Cusop Church - just who were the three people in the graves beyond the chancel, for instance? It seems that the more people look into local history, the more there is to be discovered. I had no idea that the original porch to Cusop Church had also been the belfry, for instance, with two 17th century bells, that were eventually sold for scrap. The porch to Llanigon Church is still set up with the bells in it. At Cusop, they now have a "little shed" on the roof for the bell.
Another project is looking at the geology of Cusop Dingle, and also the contents of the Cusop Parish Chest, including parish magazines that go back to 1909! They're trying to get a complete run of magazines together to deposit at HARC, the Archives in Herefordshire, which already has some of them.

On Friday 14th September, at 7pm, there will be another opportunity to find out about the research projects members of the group are carrying out. Entry is free.

Friday 21st - Sunday 23rd September is Hay History Weekend, and there are several events planned at the Parish Hall, including a talk about the Mid Wales Mental Hospital at Talgarth, now sadly decayed. It once, briefly, housed Rudolf Hess!

Other events over the coming year include a talk about Artists and Writers in the Llanthony Valley from 1730 to the present (there have been quite a few!), a talk about Gwernyfed estate, and Great War and Home Front Stories and Poems at Cusop Church in December.