The Research Group started meeting in 2005 with the principle aim of encouraging members of HHS to undertake local historical research by investigating the history of their house.
This proved popular and stimulated a number of local residents to look in detail at the story of their house and resulted in the first of the current series of exhibitions held during Wakes Week. In 2013 a Retrospective exhibition was held, when much of the work of the previous ten years was exhibited in the Methodist Hall.
Eventually there was enough accumulated information to consider publication in the Society’s journal, Rediscovering Hope which is distributed to all members of the Society and lodged with the Derbyshire Record Office.
In 2011 a joint project with Castleton Historical Society was launched to research the medieval history of the villages with the emphasis on the history of the common people.
The project addressed the history through both documentary research, and landscape archaeology and a series of test pits were excavated in both villages
The project was funded by a substantial grant from HLF and overseen by Dr Bill Bevan, a well known Sheffield based professional archaeologist. The results were published in 2012 as an HLF Research Report 2012 , ‘The Lives of the Common People in Hope and Castleton in the Medieval Period’
Since then our recent research has concentrated on aspects of WWI history, published in the Rediscovering Hope in 2015 and 2018 An exhibition covering the four years of the conflict was presented in Hope Church, during Wakes Week in 2018.
Through the Covid years we kept going with new themes on the Churchyard; Notable names in the Village, The centenary of the publication of “Notes from a Peakland Parish by William Smith Porter” and in 2024, concentrated on Objects in Plain Sight but not always seen.
The Research Group meets regularly to share on-going individual research and offer advive and help where we can. We meet usually on the 3rd Tuesday of the month at a member’s house. If you are interested in joing us email the website address for details
HOPE HISTORICAL SOCIETY 