9:42am Wednesday 5th April 2006
PHOTOGRAPHS are an essential part of our heritage. From within our own lifetime they remind us of events, good or bad, which we have experienced.
They allow us to share in the trials and tribulations of our loved ones or friends when they are apart from us.
Also photographs can tell us more about the way our predecessors lived.
In short, a photograph is worth a thousand words.
In Wycombe we are fortunate to have several collections of photographs dating back to the 1870s. These are kept at the Library, the Museum, and here at the Bucks Free Press; some 15,000 in total.
Now, thanks to a grant from the Heritage Lottery Fund, these photographs are being properly catalogued, stored under suitable conditions, and digitised so that they may be accessed over the worldwide web.
That is the SWOP project Sharing Wycombe's Old Photographs.
The project team is Chris Featherstone, Harvey Coltman and Mike Dewey, together with around 20 volunteers.
The team has now been busy for more than a year, and some 7,500 photographs have been catalogued and digitised.
We expect to finish this task around the end of the year, to coincide with the BFP's 150th anniversary.
The largest collection of photographs is that of Ron Goodearl, which is held here at the BFP.
Ron was a freelance photographer, who worked extensively for the BFP, from the 1930s until his death in 1998.
Apart from the Second World War years, when he was a photographer for the RAF, primarily in the Middle-East, Ron worked tirelessly to record events in the Wycombe area.
He was a well-known figure, travelling many thousands of miles on his motorcycle.
Ron's photographs have featured in several long-running series in the pages of the BFP, including Those Were The Days' and Down Memory Lane'. A biography of his life will appear in a future edition of the BFP, as will biographies of other local photographers whose work is included in the SWOP project.
As the project nears completion we will be publicising the availability of the website as widely as possible.
To this end, we will be happy to visit schools, community centres and similar organisations to make presentations based around the photographs.
The project is also committed to making available education packs for schools and reminiscence packs for elderly persons' day centres and other meeting places.
Many schools have already expressed a wish to receive an education pack, which we expect to complete and distribute by the end of the year.
We would be pleased to hear from any organisation who would like to receive these education or reminiscence packs.
If any of our readers have photographs of general interest that relate to Wycombe district and which they would like to make available to the project, they are asked to contact the team.
Do you have any reminiscences? If so we would like to hear from you, please contact the project manager on 01628 525207, or by email deweymiked@aol.com or via the Reference Library.
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