The concept
Prior to the turn of the century the government indicated that grants would be made available from National Lottery funds to sponsor projects to mark the millennium around the UK. The idea of creating a millennium map orginated in the summer of 1998 in response to this government initiative.

The idea of creating a map originally came from Caroline Metcalf Gibson. Caroline, together with Hilary Mirrey and others, convened a meeting in the summer of 1998 to discuss this and other ideas for which funding might be available to the benefit of the parish.

The Steering Group
Following the meeting in the summer of 1998 a steering group was formed to drive the map project forwards. This group consisted of David Morris, Caroline Metcalf-Gibson, Barbara Godden, Dick Capel, John Bull, Ken Trimmerand Richard Metcalf-Gibson. Tom Oldham later joined the group. Richard Metcalf-Gibson co-ordinated the project.

Collecting Data for the map
Barbara Godden, head teacher at the school, proposed the mechanism which was subsequently used to collect the information needed to create the map. Barbara designed a questionnaire which invited parishioners to provide contributions on local or social history, the environment or indeed on any topic of interest relating to the parish. In November 1998 nine copies of the questionnaire were distributed to the different regions of the parish by children from the school with a request that they be passed from house to house before being returned to Barbara or Caroline. Contributions from the people of the parish accumulated over the next few months and by the summer of 1999 the nine questionnaires had been returned.

Creating the Map
The task of transforming the 9 completed questionnaires into a map commenced under the direction of David Morris in the summer of 1999. Initial meetings of the steering group considered a range of possible formats for the map including the possibility of a large ceramic map to be located in the vestry of St. Oswald's church. Over a series of meetings the questionairres were disseminated and individual contributions were transferred in the form of labels on to a draft outline map of the parish hung on a wall in the artists' studio at the Manor House. As the contributions gradually filled up the map it became apparent to the group that the best way to represent them would be ink drawings accompanied by brief textual descriptions. This task was commenced in the spring of 2000. The anticipated completion date is Christmas 2000.

The Booklet
The contributions returned on the 9 questionnaires made fascinating reading and the group quickly determined that they should all be used in creating the map. However it proved difficult to devise how some contributions could be transformed into illustrations to be used on the map and consequently the idea of publishing a booklet to accompany the map was envisaged. The booklet was to contain all contibutions in their original form without adaptations. This decision was taken in order to retain the feeling of warmth and involvement evident in many of the contributions so giving an insight into the character of some local people at the time of the millennium. The booklet is to be produced by Chris Irwin of The Book House. The anticipated completion date is March 2001.

The Illustrators
David Morris, Caroline Metcalf-Gibson, Tom Oldham