To purchase this book come and visit us in the Pigeon Hut (click here for opening times) or contact us
£10.00
The History Society’s 18ft long Timeline of Walkern was installed in the village’s Pigeon Hut heritage centre on the 13th April 2026 as part of our Women of Walkern project: a project funded by Heritage Lottery that brings out of the shadows the hidden lives of the wives, mothers, daughters and sisters of the men through whose eyes history is usually seen.
Over the years many people have collected information on the history of the village – its people and places – and Walkern History Society formed in 2012 as a focus for all that work. We have since gone from strength to strength, winning our first Heritage Lottery grant in 2013 and soon after that, having discovered Walkern’s link to Magna Carta, becoming part of the national 800th anniversary celebrations under a three-year project again funded by Heritage Lottery.
In 2017 we began digging archeological test pits around the village, extending and refining our knowledge of how Walkern evolved over 6000 years, and in 2024 we opened the Pigeon Hut heritage centre to photograph, catalogue. display, explain and make available our ever increasing archive and collection of artefacts, so very kindly donated by the community.
The distillation of all the historical information gleaned about Walkern and the placing of it into historical context, was undertaken by myself and put into pictorial form by artist Granville Rush. That task of compiling that mass of information into a spreadsheet, to sketching it onto a roll of wallpaper, to refining it, reducing it and creating the final artwork, took us two years to complete! It was a happy day seeing it installed in the Pigeon Hut, along with the display cabinets beneath whose contents reflect the timeline above. There is so much that could have been included, but hopefully the Timeline and book give a taste of how the village has developed and is a framework to contextualise some of the wonderful stories of the people who have lived here
Jane Woodall PhD, WHS Chair
August 2026