Anne Balfour - Award for Outstanding Individual Contribution

The British Association for Local History offers an annual award for an outstanding individual contribution from a member of a local history society.

In December 2023 a group of Strathblane Heritage members put together a nomination for our co-chair Anne Balfour. The application highlighted the contribution Anne made towards the resurrection of the society after Murray O'Donell's death and the Covid lockdown, along with her extensive research and writing of material for our new website.

We were delighted when the BALH trustees decided to give her the award for 2024. A certificate is normally presented at the BALH annual conference day, which this year was held on Zoom. Anne recorded a short video which was shown at the zoom conference and you can see it here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AIXaUd8_eJU

The actual certificate was duly presented to Anne at the September meeting of Strathblane Heritage by Margaret Vass, who, along with Jim Rand, acted as referees for the application.

Anne is keen to stress that the revival of Strathblane Heritage is owed to the hard graft and enthusiasm of an excellent committee: "They do all the things I'm completely hopeless at, like keeping track of the membership and dealing with the technology, as well as their own research projects."