A MEMORY book to commemorate the Boxing Day floods in Ramsbottom is a work in progress.

The community response to the drama helped devastated and displaced families to keep going in the New Year.

Now, Lucy Houghton-Burnett, who co-ordinated a team of 200 volunteers in Ramsbottom, is gathering people’s recollections and photographs from the two-week volunteer activity in Ramsbottom, Strongstry and Irwell Vale.

Lucy, aged 35, a communications consultant who specialises in large-change projects, said: “As the lead volunteer co-ordinator from the Grant Arms hub, I was in the unique position of seeing the scale of the volunteer efforts, the impact of the community pulling together, but I was also receiving the messages of thanks from the residents who were helped between Boxing Day and New Year's Day.

“It didn't feel right for the thanks to stop with me as it was a team effort, by hundreds of people who gave their time, donations, and many local businesses who helped during the clean-up operation.

“The memory book is a way for local residents to share their messages of thanks with the 'strangers' who came to help at their time of need.

“A lot of them can't remember the names of the people who helped as it was a really overwhelming time.

“But it is also something that can be looked back on in times to come as it will celebrate the big thing that came out of all this and that is the sense of community and our amazing community-spirit.”

Lucy’s husband, Steve, was roped in to lead the volunteer group in Radcliffe where he helped gather donated furniture, clothing and cleaning products to be distributed to those affected.

She added: “Steve and I will share the top tips that we learnt through the process of running the volunteer hub at the Grant Arms, so if heaven forbid something similar happens again, the community can rally around, but starting with the advantage of the key things we learnt this time around.

“I am once again gobsmacked by the support and generosity of local businesses. The lovely memory book we are making containing the memories of volunteers, photos, and messages of thanks from flooded residents is being created completely for free.”

Ramsbottom printing company, Orbital has agreed to print 250 copies for free and the design of the book has been created by Spiral Communications in Leeds also free of charge.

The book will be available as a pdf, free to be emailed to people and Lucy hopes to hand out books to key volunteers and residents.

People are asked to send over contributions, including stories of the flood, photos and thank you messages for the volunteers to boxingdayfloods2015@gmail.com