Oral History Archives - the Facebook of the elderly

We return to the Cutcombe Cattle Market to find out what we can about the business of livestock in Exmoor, choosing what we hope to be a quiet morning. Though the auctioneer we had watched in awe that week was out of the office, a Mr Rook makes time for us to speak across his vast and well-worn desk. As wide as he is tall, elderly but in fine fettle, his accent is thick as he summarises the past and future of the market. Part of the site is to be sold off to finance a shiny new market which meets the copious new regulations better than the current tin shed. On the sold land a number of affordable local houses plus a few more expensive ‘open market’ homes will be built. Mr Rook hunts in his spare time, and works - at 80 years old – to get himself out of the house. He appreciates the benefits of the market’s website but cannot use a PC. His well-used dictaphone sits on the desk, its contents waiting to go to the secretary for typing up.

Later that morning in Dulverton we visit a very well-presented but rather too worthy archive of oral history, photographs and some old film transferred to a dud DVD which only plays the one about the ‘Great Freeze”. This means I have to miss out on the alluring film of a wartime parade also offered on the screen menu.

Over at a PC there is a database of the oral history archive – which proudly states “Last update 21/08/2005”. I muse on how oddly - and disappointingly - banal these archives can be, transferable between any aging rural population in the countryside. “Mother was a great cook, father was harsh....”; “We never bought a vegetable”; “People never locked their doors”. And I say that as someone who adores social history.
I decide to idly browse the contributors by name. There are no more than about fifty presented.
Mr (Tom) Rook takes my eye and I find a comprehensive summary of the entire life story of the man whose office I had just been in at the Cattle Market.

Themes : farming, oral history, Facebook, Exmoor, Somerset