As Sean Curran, the head of inclusion at Historic England, said in your article (‘Hidden stories’: Historic England funds 56 projects on working-class heritage, 21 February), it can seem that stories of working-class life are more ephemeral. As a society, we have not always considered that records of the banalities of everyday life are worth keeping. But records do exist.
At the Ironbridge Gorge Museum Trust, we have documents and testimonies that reference the individual lives of the working classes in the Ironbridge Gorge from the 18th to 20th centuries. We used them in 2023 when we created our temporary exhibition The Daily Grind. The exhibition was focused on the stories of working-class people during the Industrial Revolution, as opposed to the industrialists and masters, and was our most popular exhibition in recent years. While this type of original source may be limited, there is no doubt that the stories such diaries, documents and even recordings enabled us to tell provided personal insight and flavour that delighted our visitors. Visitors were also invited to write down their own stories or memories of family members who had worked in industries in the Ironbridge Gorge, and in this way the exhibition helped provide further contacts and information for recording working-class stories.
