A MAJOR history project which has been three years in the making has finally been launched.

The Maldon Society’s listening station at the Maeldune Heritage Centre, in Market Hill, is an oral history project which captures the memories of Maldon’s past from residents.

Visitors can listen on headphones to a selection of 15 voices and stories at the listening station.

The unit is simple to operate by touching numbers on the screen to choose different stories.

The stories will change every six months as there are now more than 30 interviewees.

Maldon Society chairman Judy Lea said: “Oral history has a unique value as the listener can directly empathise with the person speaking, even though they do not necessarily coexist.

“The recordings come with all sorts of incidental detail – vocal accents, different perceptions of law and order, working practices, and the physical structure of the town.

“This is an on-going project. It is hoped that more residents will volunteer to tell their stories of living and working in Maldon in one of the local industries, shops, on the riverside and on the railways”.

The collection has a variety of accounts including Russell Pitt, 93, who remembers his father’s involvement with the Maldon fishing industry, and Michael Evenden, whose parents owned Collins the grocers from 1960 to the 1980s.

Special guests included town mayor Jeanette Stilts, Maeldune Trust chairman Margaret Day, heritage centre manager Deborah Rhodes and donators from Essex Heritage Trust, Maldon Rotary and Tesco.

A spokesman added: “Margaret Day thanked the Maldon Society for the interesting additions of the visual archive and the exciting new addition of the oral history listening station to the centre.

“She was sure that members of the public will find these two archives most interesting.”

Extracts from some of the interviews are available at maldonsoc.org on the Memories of Maldon page.

If anyone would like to share their memories of Maldon past, call Wendy Howell on 01621 857054.