The Elston Heritage Project was planned as a two year programme to record and to celebrate the village's recent history, funded by The Heritage Lottery Fund and sponsored by The Pentagon Local History Society.

The Pentagon Society's membership was in decline in early 2006 and some impetus was needed to increase numbers.  It was a visit in the spring of 2006 to the Coddington Local History Society's exhibition of their heritage project, made possible with a £10,000 grant from the Local Heritage Initiative, which prompted Pentagon Society Secretary Stan Firth to propose that the Pentagon should embark on a similar project. 

There had been earlier commemorative projects. Geoff Peabody had assembled a hundred or so old photographs in 1988 and created a slide show in which the historical slides were matched by modern images taken from the same viewpoint.  Chris Blackamore and Fred Thomas published The Elston Index in 1997, containing 366 pages of detailed research on the village.  And Almuth Monks put together a collection of articles and photographs in 1995 to commemorate 100 years of Elston Parish Council's existence.  Now, with the benefit of computer technology and a much larger team of volunteers, the Elston Heritage Project would be much more ambitious.