Hunter wins Heritage Lottery Fund support

The Hunter Archaeological Society has received £36,500 in 2012 from the Heritage Lottery Fund (HLF) for an exciting project in South Yorkshire and North Derbyshire: 'Lives in the Past, Discoverers for the Future'. Led by volunteers from the local community, the project celebrated 100 years of community involvement in historic and archaeological research and conservation.

The project inspired and trained a new generation of ‘heritage explorers’ to continue this long tradition of amateur involvement in archaeology. The project formed part of the centenary celebrations of the Hunter Archaeological Society, a charitable society set up in 1912 to study and report on the archaeology, history and architecture of South Yorkshire and north-east Derbyshire. The Society is named after Joseph Hunter, one of the first people to research and record the region’s history. Joseph was born to a cutler in Sheffield in 1783.

The Society organised a series of events during the centenary year with the assistance of the University of Sheffield, Sheffield Local Studies Library and Museums Sheffield. These included a Centenary Weekend, 11^th - 13^th May, with a conference on community archaeology titled 'Shared Pasts', a reception at Sheffield Town Hall and dinner at the Cutlers’ Hall. The weekend launched a series of guided walks and excursions throughout the summer -these are available as self-guided trails, and there will be a special edition of the Society’s Transactions.

Weston Park Museum hosted an exhibition on the work of the Society from February. Members are researching the life stories of past members and these featured in an exhibition in Sheffield University Library in the autumn of 2012 and a specially produced booklet History Makers.

Primary schools in Barnsley, Sheffield and Dronfield took part in a project which includes digging test pits to get hands-on experience of archaeology.