The Island History Trust is a local history institution based on the Isle of Dogs in east London, England. The Trust was created by volunteers, who started to collect photographs of local life in 1981. At that time the docks and nearly all the local factories had closed, and the transformation of the Island by Canary Wharf and other developments had not begun. Some locals felt a loss of identity as their established way of life had ended and they wished to record and preserve their local history.
Initially the focus was on collecting photographs. Many were copied and returned to their owners, and notes about them were made and indexed. Later interviews were recorded interviews with elderly Islanders, and a number of people wrote memoirs to add to the collection.
The Trust's premises are currently in The Dockland Settlement, which is one of the Island's oldest community centres. The collection is open to the public on a part-time basis, and may be visited out of normal hours by appointment. The trust also publishes organises exhibitions, runs local history classes and arranges open days when former residents of the Island return to reminisce.
Famous quotes containing the words island, history and/or trust:
“We crossed a deep and wide bay which makes eastward north of Kineo, leaving an island on our left, and keeping to the eastern side of the lake. This way or that led to some Tomhegan or Socatarian stream, up which the Indian had hunted, and whither I longed to go. The last name, however, had a bogus sound, too much like sectarian for me, as if a missionary had tampered with it; but I knew that the Indians were very liberal. I think I should have inclined to the Tomhegan first.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)
“In history an additional result is commonly produced by human actions beyond that which they aim at and obtain—that which they immediately recognize and desire. They gratify their own interest; but something further is thereby accomplished, latent in the actions in question, though not present to their consciousness, and not included in their design.”
—Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel (1770–1831)
“Never trust a husband too far, nor a bachelor too near.”
—Helen Rowland (1875–1950)