Introducing MyHouseMyStreet

The Foundry Street Event (TFSE), staged during Brighton & Hove Open Door 2008 (BHOD 08), introduced visitors to the history of Foundry Street and those who lived there between the 1820s and the 1970s, by displaying posters listing the street’s residents and the jobs they did. The event was very well received and numerous requests were made for similar events to be staged in other streets during subsequent BHODs.

As the organizers of Brighton & Hove Open Door, we have decided to respond to this request by planning a series of similar events for BHOD 09. Rather than label these with individual titles we have decided to adopt an overarching project name, MyHouseMyStreet, and to use individual street names as a suffix to this when referencing a particular event. Thus, a MyHouseMyStreet project would become, for example: MyHouseMyStreet-Boundary Lane or MyHouseMyStreet-North Road.

To assist with the preparation of the new events and to provide a permanent access point to the materials gathered, we are developing a MyHouseMyStreet website and this blog.

The website is an evolution of a project started last year for The Foundry Street Event. The new site provides a much more coherent and robust presence and one capable of automating the compilation of historic materials. We will be testing and further developing the new site over time, with the aim of eventually creating a resource that is capable of assisting multiple users in multiple locations to document their local street history.

It is intended that the blog will capture the development history of the new ’street’ projects and the online services that support them.