TWO women who founded a village history society will be remembered this month. North Baddesley Historical Society was started by Una Lonergan and Beryl Green in September 2006. Una died last November and Beryl earlier this year.

Now two benches and two trees are to be dedicated to their memory at North Baddesley Recreation Ground at midday on September 20.

Una’s daughter Pauline Clark said there will be a short memorial service and anyone who knew her mother and Beryl is welcome to attend.

Una and Beryl were extremely well-known in the village and they published several books including The Changing Face of North Baddesley in 1996 and North Baddesley Revisited – a 56 page pictorial journey through the 20th century, which came out in in 2005 and sold more than 1,500 copies.

Before starting the village historical society Una and Beryl, who worked together at the Ordnance Survey in Southampton, created the North Baddesley Archive – a detailed databank of information on the village and its people and memories of the community.

Speaking after starting the Baddesley Archive, Una and Beryl said: “We have been friends since we were teenagers and in the early 1990s we decided to find out more about the village that we lived in. In the process we started to gather a lot of old photographs, old wills, documents and information about the village, including quite a few memoirs of people who lived here all their lives.”