Oswestry Town Museum is researching how lockdowns through the ages have impacted on Oswestry, its residents and the surrounding area.

Although the lockdown of 2020 was the most far reaching and most inclusive countrywide lockdown that has been experienced in living memory, there have been other times when Oswestry has experienced lockdowns, sometimes affecting the whole area, sometimes the town and other times just certain sections of local society.

In WWI there were food shortages, stockpiling was an offence so no panic buying then and rationing was very much in force.

In WWII there were regulations about showing lights at night (something we didn’t need to worry about in 2020) and if you drove a motor car you had to disable it at night to restrict its value to any invading forces. And again rationing was in force for a long time.

During the Foot and Mouth epidemic of 1967, described as the worst of its kind, large parts of the farming community  were under a similar lockdown to that experienced by all of us in 2020, no access to farms or farm land, disinfectant stations by every farm yard gate, and hundreds of infected cattle slaughtered and burned causing distress to many farmers and their livelihoods

Mark and Cass from Oswestry museum are looking for family stories connected to previous lockdown restrictions, and are hoping to collate them into a record of Oswestry Diaries through the ages, looking at how folks coped in days gone by, times when there was no internet support, no on line learning and no way round the rules and restrictions of the day.

If you have a family story to tell, an anecdotal tale of hardships during past times of restrictions or even a piece of history or heritage to share please get in touch with us at the Museum.