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40<br />
male perspective, and the articles in that particular issue<br />
were uniquely female-led and we received a lot of very<br />
positive feedback.<br />
“The WW1 issue carried so many powerful and emotive<br />
pieces, and we had quite a few readers who, after reading<br />
the issue, were able to jump into their own family histories”.<br />
Before shooting off to avoid a parking ticket, I asked Alex<br />
why he thought Past Forward had been so successful over<br />
thirty years.<br />
“We are 100% reliant on the passion of our volunteers and<br />
the knowledge of our contributors” concludes Alex, “Past<br />
Forward just wouldn’t exist without their contributions”.<br />
Yvonne Eckersley<br />
One of the volunteers at Archives: <strong>Wigan</strong> & Leigh and<br />
an enthusiastic contributor to Past Forward is Yvonne<br />
Eckersley.<br />
Leyther Yvonne retired in 2008 as a primary school teacher<br />
and wanted to ‘give something back’ to the community.<br />
Yvonne told me that she has a lifetime interest in history<br />
and that the Archives was a natural choice when she was<br />
on the lookout for post-retirement activities.<br />
“I felt the skills I had developed whilst studying for my<br />
history degree would be useful to the Archives.<br />
“I was specifically interested in ordinary people’s history,<br />
the type of people whose lives weren’t accurately<br />
represented in history books. The experience of writing<br />
my dissertation on the rise of the Labour Movement in<br />
Leigh convinced me of the need to research and reveal<br />
the rich nature of our local history”.<br />
A few years ago, the Archives service published an<br />
anthology of all the pieces Yvonne has contributed to the<br />
magazine and she is currently researching the life and times<br />
of Helen Fairhurst (nee Silcock) who lived between 1865-<br />
1951, in the Pemberton and Goose Green area of <strong>Wigan</strong>.<br />
But Yvonne has not-so-fond memories of the first task<br />
she was asked to complete at the Archives. She confesses<br />
“My first job was cataloguing wills written in the 1600’s<br />
which was very complicated and cumbersome, and I did<br />
think that I was given that job to test out whether I had<br />
‘stickability’, but I survived and lived to tell the tale!”.<br />
The latest issue of Past Forward is available at the Borough’s libraries at a cost of £2, or you can buy an annual<br />
subscription to Past Forward for £6 plus P&P via the Council’s website here;<br />
www.wigan.gov.uk/Resident/Museums-archives/Subscribe-to-Past-Forward-Magazine.aspx<br />
Archived issues of Past Forward are available online here;<br />
www.wigan.gov.uk/Resident/Museums-archives/Past-Forward.aspx
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