The Collections Story

Preparing for a move is always an opportunity to tackle jobs you’ve been hoping to get round to for years. Moving an archive is no exception! Cataloguing and sharing our huge photographic collection has taken up our time and efforts over the years, but we also have an extensive array of negatives - what do we do about those?

We don’t want to waste resources on packaging, moving and storing items that are duplicates, poor quality or nothing to do with Cheshire – so we’re appraising the negatives (as well as thousands of photographic slides) and recording them carefully, for the future benefit of our researchers.

Our fragile glass plate negatives will also be included, but we’re starting this project with their celluloid cousins. These negatives come in various sizes, they need handling with gloves to protect them from grease or damage, and we use a range of equipment to help identify them.

A selection of our equipment: a lightbox, strips of negatives, a spreadsheet and acid-free storage box.

Nitrile gloves are worn when handling negatives, and a magnifying glass is essential to help find identifying details.

A scanner is useful when we need to have a closer look at some negatives.

A selection of glass plate and celluloid negatives.

Our collection includes negatives in both black and white, and colour.

Larger black and white and colour negatives, some containing helpful information.

The negatives need special packaging and cold storage to preserve them for the future, and volunteers will be adding further valuable details to the descriptions. For the first time we will know exactly what they are and be able to enhance our visual collections with sometimes previously unseen images of Cheshire.

We are only halfway through this project and have already recorded over five thousand negatives. The images come from all over Cheshire and include everything from landscapes to townscapes, portraits to groups, buildings, waterways, vehicles – almost anything! Here is just a small selection of some of our favourites so far.

This Chester steam trailer ride (an early charabanc?!) appears to be celebrating a coronation – perhaps that of King Edward VII, or King George V?

We have many unidentified group images like schoolchildren, Sunday schools and workplaces – it’s very helpful to find negatives like this where the year, school and class are clearly visible!

Burtonwood Airforce Base, home to the RAF and US Air Force during World War II: some of these negatives appear in a Local Studies book by Aldon P Ferguson, but this is one we hadn’t seen before.

This was so different to the negatives next to it that we wondered whether someone had taken the camera on holiday – but this 1920s Arc de Triomphe was in fact the entrance to Eastham Ferry Gardens.

As well as our favourites, we have come across several mysteries. Can you help us identify the three images pictured here? Let us know in the comments or send us an email.

A town or village square with cars and people, and a black and white pub called the ‘George and Dragon’ – do you recognise this location?

A celebratory event in the street outside the ‘Railway Inn’, with crowds and bunting – do you recognise this location?

A maypole erected outside a building, possibly a school? Crowds have gathered to watch the festivities – do you recognise this location?

We will soon be relaunching our popular social media feature #MysteryImageMonday on Facebook and Instagram, with more of these unidentified negatives. So, if you like a bit of detective work, be sure to follow us there.

By Heather Vernon (Local Studies Librarian) and Hannah Bate (Archives Assistant)