A retired vet, a part-time pallbearer, a photography student, a retired scientist and a former Tesco team leader are among the 30 volunteers working on the KM Group digital archive project.

The plea for volunteers to assist with the Your Heritage lottery funded project to digitise KM Group newspapers from 1859 to 1919 created interest across the county with offers of help coming from Northfleet, Halling, Deal, Ashford, Faversham, Canterbury and Maidstone.

Teachers, librarians and journalists have also been coming forward to contribute their skills - not only to ensure the bound volumes and pages are catalogued in preparation for the digitisation process but also to help prepare a schools’ teaching pack.

Managing editor Lesley Bellew said that as well as the local community, former Kent residents who live in Cornwall, Southampton and Suffolk also want to help check the pages once they are digitised.

She said: "We were amazed by the response we received from just one article on the project. Many of the volunteers are retired, so they have a little bit of time on their hands but there are sixth form students, too, who want to be part of the team.

"Roger Birchall, a retired vet from Barming, near Maidstone, says he can’t wait to get out the scalpel again to work on the pages! We’ll have to hold him back.

"He and Jeff Wilkinson, a member of the Barming History Society, have been cataloguing the pages but they confess it’s a bit slow because they get so distracted by the content."

Dave and Maureen Waller, of Littlebrook Road, Ashford, helped to move the heavy bound volumes to an area where the volunteers can start to catalogue the 26,000 pages.

Maureen said: "I liked the idea of putting history online. It will be great to look back and think of all those old pages and know that in future everyone can see them. I wanted to be part of that."

Dave, who has researched both sides of his family’s history, says he is particularly keen to see the 'old news’ being made available to the community.

He said: "I was born and bred in Ashford. I buy all the books on its history and love to see the old pictures.

"My father worked for the railways in Ashford. He was an apprentice. I also worked for the railways, on the shop floor through to supervisor at Chart Leacon.

"I also went to the same school as he did. I have researched a lot of my family history. I love making new discoveries. Being involved in this project is really interesting to me – as I use archives I know they offer very valuable information."

Click here to read Jackie Grebby's Exploring Kent History blog

Dave works part-time as a pallbearer and limousine driver for an Ashford company but tries to find a couple of hours, most weeks, to work in the KM Group’s archive at Larkfield.

He and Maureen work in a pair to catalogue the pages – making notes on the issue number, pagination and the state of the pages.

There have already been a few surprises like the South Eastern Railway timetables folded within some of the 1850s-60s issues and the occasional 'extra two bonus pages’.

It is hoped that the cataloguing of pages will be complete by Christmas.