How could we have not acknowledged the passing of not just a century but a millennium without marking the occasion!

With all the hype about the world coming to a halt and the doom merchants claiming the technology of the time was going to be very unpredictable as the world rolled into 2000 the term ‘Y2K‘ and the ‘Millennium Bug’ became the talking point.

Millennium Bug

A computer flaw, the so-called “Millennium Bug,” led to anxiety and the Y2K (Year 2000) scare.  When complex computer programmes were first written in the 1960s, engineers used a two-digit code for the year, leaving out the “19.” As the year 2000 approached, many believed that the systems would not interpret the “00” correctly, but as 1900. Activities that were programmed on a daily or yearly basis would be damaged or flawed. As December 31, 1999, turned into January 1, 2000, computers might interpret December 31, 1999, turning into January 1, 1900 therefore causing a major glitch in computer systems worldwide.

So it was even more important to mark the moment in time and we started to look for how Woodnewton could celebrate before the end of the world as we knew it.

Various things were being discussed by communities and businesses up and down the country and so the search began on what would be most meaningful for our village. It ranged from a new village sign, to various monuments, tree plantings etc which was all great but Deirdre and I felt we needed something more personal to the people & families living in the village.  It should be something future residents could reveal in the years to come assuming we were all still here as the clock ticked into the year 2000 .

So the time capsule came to mind as a way of collecting lots of different mementos together which would mark the moment up until this point. With this germ of an idea we approached the Parish Council with the proposal and off we went.

We also were able to agree where and how we would hide it for the future residents of Woodnewton to discover. We also managed to get Rob Bibby at the pottery to make a plaque which was proudly mounted on one of the village hall internal walls – Have a look next time you are in the hall.

Our dilemma was then how much info could be collected and more importantly what to store it in that would resist the riggers of time.

I was working for a specialist lighting company at the time and we had special fittings used on oil rigs that would resist the North Sea weather and believe it or not were explosion proof! We thought that might do the job .

We put a small group of people together to assist in the challenge and the project gathered pace. Everyone in the village was contacted about the plan. Some of the ideas where things like photographs of households standing outside there houses (Now called ‘selfies’), news items, momentous occasions the village had witnessed e.g. Coco the Clown and the Clownfest which bought us the village hall we now have, various photos from around the village, Census’s etc, etc. As space was a premium we also scanned everything and put onto CD and hoped the technology would still be around to be able to retrieve the information held on it.

We won’t tell you everything that went in it as it would spoil the surprise in the future if and when it is retrieved, and to that end a record was made in the Parish Council records of this and where it was to be stored and details were also logged at the local council records offices.

We are please to also report, if you didn’t already know, midnight passed on the 1 January 2000, and the crisis failed to materialise – planes did not fall from the sky and power stations did not melt down.

As we write this we cannot believe it has been 21 years since we did this and how much has changed even in this short space of time.

Unfortunately we won’t be around for the next Millennium but hope the Village is still a great place to live as it is now and the next Y3K  Time Capsule is created to continue to mark these events in time.

Deirdre & Ian Blackburn

2021