Eleven Empty Spaces - Memories Go Online

A range of memories can now be heard online as part of Dover Museum's oral history project to commemorate the 20th anniversary of the bombing of the Royal Marines School of Music, in remembrance of the 11 young men who were tragically killed.

Eleven Empty Spaces is an oral history project that was created to collect the memories of people affected by the bombing at the Royal Marines barracks in Deal on Friday 22 September 1989. Interviews were held with a wide range of people including service personnel, members of the emergency services, the Mayor of Deal and local residents.

Dover Museum held an exhibition based on these recordings in 2010. The panels from that exhibition are still available for loan to local organisations. As a continuation of the project, extracts from the interviews can now be heard on the Museum's website.

Extracts on the website are sections taken from the full interviews and they cover a variety of subjects. For ease of selection the extracts have been divided into two groups. The first group covers memories on and around the day of the bombing. The second group looks at other aspects of the Royal Marines in Deal, including their close connections with local people, the longer reaching effects of the bombing and the eventual departure of the Royal Marines School of Music from Deal in 1996. There are also a few extracts that relate to the lives and work of some of the people interviewed.

Linda Mewes, from Dover Museum, said: "As well as being a memorial to those who were tragically killed or injured in the bombing, these recordings are a fascinating social history of what was once the life blood of the town of Deal, and of the organisations and daily life surrounding the Royal Marines when they were based at Walmer Barracks."

The Eleven Empty Spaces project was funded by the Museums, Libraries and Archives Council (MLA), with additional funding from Walmer Parish Council and Deal Town Council. For more information, or to hear extracts from interviews, visit the Dover Museum website at www.dovermuseum.co.uk.