A LANCASTER history project is set to gather stories from ‘behind the scenes’ of the First World War.

Lancaster Military Heritage Group and a team of researchers from Lancaster University have secured Heritage Lottery Funding to look at how the war impacted on the people at home.

They are now keen to hear from anyone who has a story to tell about Lancaster in WW1.

The focus will be on the soldiers who came home, the men who stayed at home and the women and children who waited for loved ones to return from the front line.

MORE TOP STORIES:

“We want supplement the stories already told with stories passed down from generation to generation – those tales which are not part of the public records,” said Dr Corinna Peniston-Bird, a senior lecturer in Lancaster University’s History Department.

“We would love local people to share any relevant letters, photographs and stories with us.”

The project will ‘flesh out’ the very popular ‘Streets of Mourning’ project which, two years ago, mapped Lancaster’s lost WW1 soldiers onto the streets where they lived, enabling people to click on a street name on a unique, interactive map to see how the war impacted on a particular city area.

“We now want to tell other short stories so the deaths are more than just statistics and capture other ways that the war impacted on Lancaster,” added Dr Peniston-Bird.

To that end a team from the project, which also includes Lancaster Civic Society and the King’s Own Regiment Museum, will be at Lancaster University Campus in the City premises in St Nicholas Arcades on Saturday, May 14, from 10am to 4pm.

Armed with scanners, cameras, recording equipment and volunteers, the team want to collect as many stories as possible.

For details of the project, visit http://wp.lancs.ac.uk/greatwar/