A PROJECT celebrating the history of Cowley had an unexpected late addition at a tea party exhibition to mark the scheme’s end.

The I Cowley project, launched in May 2010, aimed to create a living archive of the area and involved hundreds of people contributing photographs, stories and objects.

Among those who wanted to take part was Mick Olive, but the former Cowley lad died of lung cancer on August 29, aged 82, before he had a chance to get involved.

So when his widow, Jacki, saw a report in the Oxford Mail about the tea party on Saturday, at Fusion Arts in Princes Street, she jumped at the opportunity to fulfil one of her husband’s last wishes.

She said: “I remembered seeing the display in Cowley centre when my husband was still alive and he had said he would like to get involved, but then he got very poorly.

“When I saw the story, I realised I never did follow it up and we had these lovely pictures of him standing in front of his house in Church Hill Road, aged about six.

“It was only through the Oxford Mail that, luckily, I was able to catch up with it again.”

She took the pictures to the event, and organisers – who were not expecting any new contributions, just a chance for people to celebrate and reminisce – quickly mounted the images and hung them with the rest of the exhibition.

Mrs Olive, 65, of St Thomas Street, said: “It was absolutely wonderful for me, because I felt I was doing something he had wanted to be involved in.

“We’d often been to Cowley and looked at the old house and he had reminisced about his life and school days in Cowley.

“And when I watched the DVD [shown at the tea party], there were lots of things I know that Mick could have expanded upon if he had been there.”

She said her husband, who was diagnosed with lung cancer in October 2010 and had been receiving treatment at the Churchill Hospital before his death, had moved to the house in Church Hill Road, Cowley, in 1930.

His parents paid the princely sum of £885 for the property.

He also went to school in the area, studying at St James Infants School and Donnington Junior School, where comedian Ronnie Barker was a contemporary.

The I, Cowley project was funded by a £47,240 Heritage Lottery Fund grant and was run by Fusion Arts, the Ark-T Centre and the Oxfordshire History Society.

A website – i-cowley.info – has been set up, documenting the secret histories which were unearthed during the project. It is still open for current and former residents to make a contribution.

An interactive DVD has also been created and will be available from locations such as Temple Cowley Library.