A History Project - Forgotten Abergavenny

Sassy Hicks is the administrator of a town Community Project called Forgotten Abergavenny. Here she explains the origins and purposes of the project that has attracted over 4,000 followers in 90 countries.

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Forgotten Abergavenny was started because a small team from Cardiff University’s School of Social Sciences were working in the town on a community project. We were using posters, word of mouth and press releases to let the people of Abergavenny know about the project but I felt we needed to do something more interactive. Websites are great, but they don’t let people join in and share their experiences so I created a Facebook page and used local history as the subject matter.

The team from Cardiff School of Social Sciences had been working in the town on other projects for two years before Forgotten Abergavenny. The town was picked because there are so many different types of community in the town – the urban and rural etc. and they wanted to work with all types of people but in a smaller area.

The original purpose of the Forgotten Abergavenny project was to be able to communicate and interact with people across the area to inform them about events and other work the university team were undertaking – such as community consultation events, theatre plays, music events and open days. But Forgotten Abergavenny quickly took on a life of its own and it exists now to inform people about the town’s history, to bring together people from across the world and to preserve memories and recent social history.

We get all types of images sent to us, although ones featuring people are quite popular! It tends to be the landscapes or scenes of old shops in the town that get the most views and shares though. We receive so many fascinating stories and this is the main reason why I keep the page going as a volunteer! I especially like photos of old pubs that are now long gone because some of the tales you hear about them are amazing. Out of all of our photos though, the ones taken by Udo Schultz are the most fascinating. Udo is a wonderful man who lives in Germany but he has been holidaying in Abergavenny for seventy years since he was a small boy. Liz Davies, Editor of The Abergavenny Chronicle, put me in touch with Udo when she heard about Forgotten Abergavenny because he has taken photos of the town over the past seventy years. I find it incredible that some of the finest images in Forgotten Abergavenny have been taken by a lovely chap in Germany! Udo and his family have become very good friends of mine and I meet up with him on his annual trip back to the town.

Our main plan with Forgotten Abergavenny is to simply keep going! I run the page on my own and I don’t live in the town – I live near Pontypool – so sourcing images is the hardest part for me. There are several reasons why I run the page. Even though I don’t live in Abergavenny, it is a town I have always loved ever since I attended Gwent Young People’s Theatre as a teenager, so running the page is my way of giving something back to a wonderful community. I would love to publish a Forgotten Abergavenny book in the very near future but most of all I would love people to continue contributing photos. People can either contribute by sending us a private message in Facebook or by emailing photos to: forgottenabergavenny@gmail.com

Here is a selection of photos, kindly provided by Forgotten Abergavenny, on the following pages. Perhaps they will bring back some old memories!