The Map

Welcome to the Front Door Histories digital map of Lymington and Pennington. This is a collaborative project between SPUD and the Volunteers at St Barbe Art Gallery and Museum. We set out to collect photographs of the Post-War history of the Town as it grew and changed, documented by its inhabitants. There is something fascinating about collecting the recent past, it is part memory and part record. The front door was chosen as the point of transition between our private and public lives. This was an important demarcation in the past and was a place we documented our day to day far more than we perhaps do now. The front door also gives us something static to observe change from. An archive is not just a collection; it is pointed and questioning and needs you to interpret its ideas. This archive is an invitation for you to explore its possibilities, find something that excites you and trace it back and across Lymington and Pennington. 

 

"Recent History is often taken for granted, but the Front Door project brings it into focus and ensures that recent artefacts are collected and maintained and presented." 

                                                                                                                            - John Astbury, St Barbe volunteer

​​

​

Contemporary Archives

Having embarked on The Map St Barbe volunteers then commissioned two new contemporary archives from two photographers. Project 1 - Lower Buckland Road created by Paul Close and Project 2 - Adding New Voices to the Archive by Danilo Zocatelli. Collecting contemporary information is a very different process to gathering up historical images. A historic archive becomes exciting when the viewer starts to ask questions of it. It turns a collection into a vibrant resource. To build a contemporary archive you have to start with a set of questions to discover the material that will then be collected. 

 

Lower Buckland Road Project - Paul Close

Lower Buckland Road stands out as one of the significant historic roads of medieval Lymington. It exists as a microcosm, plotting the evolutionary change that the town has gone through. Pauls portraits are records of place and its people, it's a growing narrative of the character of a Forest Town. 

 

 

Adding New Voices to the Record - Danilo Zocatelli

"When we think of about home and family, we often picture idealised versions. But families are formed by individuals who choose to live together, share care, and create bonds of love regardless of gender, race, structure, or number. These portraits offer different ways of understanding family."

Danilo uses the Brazilian sitting out front of your house to connect with alternative family units and to explore less seen groups that often get missed out in archive narratives. 

 

Please explore and enjoy discovering these stories

 

(Map only accessible via desktop computer - does not support mobile devices.)