JUST far enough from the A1079 not to know it's there, Newton-upon-Derwent is a quiet place possessing what estate agents would describe as bags of character. It is not chocolate box pretty, but mature trees and ancient brick cottages give it a timeless air. A casual visitor might think there was little to a village like this. They would be mistaken. It is a place packed with history, if you know where to look.

For four years now, the Newton Upon Derwent Local History Society has been looking. And they have already found enough to create a CD Rom.

In charge of this project is a retired York University professor, Peter Venables. He was kind enough to show me a sneak preview of the CD Rom's contents: it is a hugely impressive resource of information about the village's origins and developments, its buildings and businesses, and its residents and their memories.

Photographs show the way things used to be and are now. And the disc is all yours for a bargain £5, on sale at the history society's Golden Jubilee exhibition: The Changing Village.

This is the society's second major venture. With the help of a Lottery grant, it staged a Millennium exhibition, Newton Revisited, complete with photos, maps and memorabilia, much of which was on show for the first time. More than 300 people attended.

One of the society's leading lights, Margaret Horsley, said: "Now seemed the perfect time, with the Jubilee weekend, to do another one - to show folks the story so far."

Mrs Horsley, who has lived in the village nearly all her life and married into the family that has run Horsley Haulage there since 1921, has always been keen on local history.

Before the society was set up, she had done some research and discovered that the village name was Anglo-Saxon, meaning an estate by the Derwent.

The history society has been planning The Changing Village almost from the moment the Millennium display was taken down.

"The main theme this time is how things have changed in 50 years of the Queen's reign," said Prof Venables.

"In fact we go back a little bit further than that, to the Second World War.

"The village has changed from being almost entirely a farming village to what it is today."

The speed of farming's decline in Newton-upon-Derwent surprised him.

"It was a place where nearly every house was involved in farming. If it wasn't a farm, then it housed farm workers.

"Now there are only two major, active farms out of the 13 that used to be in the Main Street. In the parish there are more.

"When we came here, cattle were driven up and down the street. There's nothing of that now.

"There's no livestock farming at all, except poultry; no pigs, no cattle, no sheep."

Times are still changing as agricultural methods and equipment improve. "Even the photographs taken a couple of years ago are now out of date."

What was farmland not so many years ago is now used for a variety of purposes, including stables and new housing.

This village expansion and influx of newcomers is a definite change, as Prof Venables' wife Ness observed. "We moved in 28 years ago. There had only been one other family moved in the previous 25 years."

The couple live in a cottage that is at least 200 years old. Like every old building in Newton, it has its own story to tell - and, as you might expect, it has an agricultural connection.

It used to belong to a cobbler. The Venables' former neighbour, who was a dairymaid, still referred to the part of the house where he plied his trade as "the shop".

"It seems as though there were three families who were shoemakers who lived in a row," said Mrs Venables.

"The shoes were made here. Some of them were sold in the shop, and some of them were put on the back of a cart and walked down the river and into York and sold in the market."

Although The Changing Village exhibition concentrates on the last half century or so, it will put that period in historical context.

Among the displays will be an enclosure map from 1776, showing a pattern of thin strip-like fields, belonging to a variety of landowners.

Each field had its own name, including the odd sounding Low and High Wezens: Wezen is thought to be an old English word for gullet.

The map can then be compared to aerial photographs of the village, dating from the 1940s, 1960s and the present day. From this bird's-eye perspective, you can see the imprint on the land of ancient farming techniques.

Medieval ridge-and-furrow is still visible. So too is a distinctive curve to a field boundary which an archaeologist from York University identified as being typical of that made by an ox-pulled plough.

There is also the suggestion that a Roman road once ran through the village.

Although Prof Venables' specialist subject is psychology, not history, he has become immersed in the research.

Something that caught his eye is the distinctive, triangular patterns of brick seen in some of the older houses. This is called tumbling brickwork, and must have taken real skill to create.

The CD Rom will be demonstrated at the exhibition. But that's not the end of this high-tech history.

"The trouble is, you don't know where to stop," said Prof Venables.

"We are publishing this as a first edition. If people want to come back at the end of the year, they can swap their version for an updated one, for the price of a disc."

The history society is asking people to bring along old photographs and information about Newton, but the exhibition is not just for the village.

"We genuinely want people to come and see," said Mrs Horsley. "It's open to everybody."

Meanwhile, she is busily updating the history society's database from parish records and the census from 1841-1901. She also wants to take photographs of the present villagers outside their homes.

As Prof Venables put it: "What's extraordinary is that here is a village with no church and with a pub that's been opened and closed.

"You would think there's nothing here. But you get interested in all sorts of things."

Updated: 10:41 Monday, May 27, 2002