Cheadle Discovery Group: WW2 Project Launch Speech

The Cheadle Discovery Group's World War 2 (WW2) project (funded by the National Heritage Lottery) was officially launched by trustee Ivan Wozniak, with this inspirational speech on 18 September 2025.

It was given at a joint meeting, involving project partners Cheadle and District Historical Society and Cheadle Wellspring Methodist Church.

Below is a transcript of the speech:

Good evening everyone. My name is Ivan Wozniak and as a trustee of Cheadle Discovery Group, I welcome you all to the launch event of our exciting project entitled, "World War 2 Spirit and the Hope of Cheadle”.

Our project has been funded mainly by the National lottery Heritage Fund, with some match funding from Outside Arts and Cheadle Town Council. We thank them sincerely for their support.

It has taken over a year to develop our project and includes many distinct elements and several community partners including the 2 involved today, namely Cheadle Historical Society and Cheadle Methodist Church.

Our project focusses on researching and presenting life in Cheadle during World War 2, as related by the Cheadle and Tean Times and other local newspapers. Over a year ago now, Cheadle Discovery Group acquired the unique archive of the Cheadle and Tean Times. The collection dates back to 1920s and includes most of the war years. Because of the poor condition of many of the newspapers we have partnered with Find my Past and they have agreed to digitise them and make them available for research as part of the British Newspaper Archive.

Whilst research of the newspapers is core to the project, we also want information from local people. We want you to share your wartime memories or passed on memories of your families with us. Indeed we plan to record some as oral histories as part of the project, as well as recognise and record those who served in World War 2 from Cheadle.

The 2 year project is too big to relate everything in detail right now, however I do want to mention 2 events which will be highlights of the project.

The first event, "The Longest Yarn 2", is happening in December 2025 at Great Wood Hall, Tean and is being organised by our partner Outside Arts. It is an exhibition made up of 80 x 1 metre panels of "wool based miniature figures and art". I can promise you it is amazing and will have thousands of visitors. Tickets are free but they're only available via the Outside Arts website.

The Second event is planned for June 2026. We are organising with partner Team Cheadle a World War 2 celebration one day event on the High St. The event includes a whole range of family activities and entertainment. However, I am delighted to announce today that the highlight of that event will be a full-size Spitfire aircraft in Cheadle. The reason we have made the spitfire a focus of our project is because it has great relevance to Cheadle. During World War 2 Cheadle people paid for a spitfire via donations. The aircraft was named “the Hope of Cheadle” and we plan to tell its story as part of our project.

Thank you for listening and thank you to Cheadle Historical Society for the opportunity to make this presentation.

Further details

The Longest Yarn 2 wool based miniature figures depict what it was like in Britain between the declaration of war on 3 September 1939 to Victory in Europe Day on 8 May 1945. This includes significant events such the King’s Speech, D-Day, The Blitz, the bombing of major cities, Britain coping with the war, the Home Guard, the Women’s Land Army, rationing, and much more.

A list of other activities we are planning as part of the project includes:

• yarnbombing,

• make Do and mend craft sessions,

• a wartime edition of the stunner,

• Cheadle primary school and evacuees stories,

• WW2 themed films,

• exhibitions and displays,

• a big band WW2 themed dance,

• music and drama,

• oral histories.