Reports

South Tyneside Meeting - May 2003 "Beamish Museum Photo Archive" by Julian Harrop A Report by Margaret Stafford

As you all know I like a challenge, well the meeting tonight presented one - how to report an hour and a half of photos to someone who wasn't there to see it!! Here goes......

Julian Harrop from the Beamish photo archive was our guest tonight along with his digital projector, lap top and box of mystery objects - in other words the archive came with him!

He called his talk "snooping on snaps" and told us he had been working at the archive for 14 years - as the talk progressed we decided he spent more of his time having fun with photos and that it couldn't possibly be classed as work!

There are about 250,000 photos in the archive give or take, with approximately 120,000 accessible to the public, increasing all the time. We saw a satellite photo of the Beamish site and the new building which houses the regional resource centre. The collection was originally in Beamish Hall but thanks to funding from the lottery and the Catherine cookson trust amongst others has now moved to a purpose built centre and is set to double or even treble in size. There is good access for any disabled visitors.

There are the equivalent of 7 tennis courts of flat shelving and cold store. Negatives are stored at 10 degrees C and 28-32% relative humidity and paper at 19 degrees C and 50% humidity.

The main store (or glory hole or treasure house depending on your point of view!) has roller racking to maximise the use of floor space. There are 5 moveable sections in the library with 30,000 volumes including possibly the most comprehensive collection of trade directories in the region.

The shelving is 15' high and there is a hydraulic lift which requires staff to have driving lessons! The small objects store is an Aladdin's cave of clocks, lamps, fire extinguishers - you name it Beamish appears to have a collection of it!

The cold store has acid free boxes and packets and inert shelving for negatives and photos and glass plates up to 20"x16". Often items are rescued as firms closed eg one engineering company deposited 30,000 negatives in brown paper envelopes - they all have to be catalogued and properly stored (vertically ).

There are also masses of family photo albums - the contents scanned and the albums then stored intact. Scanning is where the fun begins ( and where we became convinced this couldn't possibly be counted as work!). Julian showed examples of restoration work on some of the photos where lines disappeared, creases straightened, faded photos were brightened up and telegraph poles removed! Before you ask, the original is always kept to maintain authenticity but the restored images undoubtedly offer a better view of the subject.

One touching story was of a tin type photo - almost unrecognisable in its original form - of a 2 year old little girl. The photo had been treasured by her father and carried in his wallet until it became unrecognisable. Now in her 80s it was the only photo she had of herself as a baby - the restored photo was wonderful to be seen - the baby emerging as a bright-eyed mischievous little girl.

The digital technology appears to bring out images and qualities the human eye cannot detect - it really was like magic!

We saw a photo of a group of children from the Durham Advertiser, it was blown up to wall size and displayed in the DLI museum and within 2 days all the children, the photographer and the camera had been identified and someone even knew where the film had been bought! It turned out to be of the street next to the row of pit cottages which had been transferred to Beamish!

Another request came from a lady "can you help me find my uncle?" She knew he had been an engineer and those of you who have visited Beamish recently may have seen the group photo in the bank of the society of engineers. It turns out the individuals had been photographed separately and then put together into the group - and yes he was there and his picture was sent on to her.

We saw the fortune teller and her canaries at the town Moor temperance society meeting (honest!), an elephant walking down Northumberland street (title - the bun taker ), bare footed urchins playing street games, a photographer being photographed at work and sheep going to the sheep market (where the centre of life is now) around 1900 - pre Tyne Bridge.

Julian showed us the detail on some of the photos eg of factories and said that every time he viewed them he would see something new. Often the photos were taken for a very specific purpose eg central heating installation or street lighting but the surroundings and context are reflections of their time so there are some wonderful street scenes, with cars and pushchairs, or the interior of wheatley hill chapel (the only known photo having been taken by the firm who installed the heating system!).

Digital wizardry enables you to read the signs on the sides of shops - to reposition them so they appear as if you had walked down the street you are looking at in the photo. We saw shots of confectionery items - mutterings of recognition in the audience for Mintola, Terry's Devon Milk, Nestle's Triple Chocolate Bar, hot salted peanuts, empire butter (2s 11d), post toasties - and remember those tall scales with the weight reading at the top? There were Bryant and May branded cigar lights with heads that wouldn't fall off!

There was Newcastle airport when it had 1 runway and was called Dinnington airfield, Terry O'Neill from the 10'clock show and the Viewer television programme guide from 1952 - cost 4d - and featuring Hughie Green.

We saw the interior of Maynards sweet shop, the first self-service Co-op at Lemington with the request to please use the wire basket provided, offices full of papers - not a machine in sight, women hand making cigarettes and hand packaging tablets, a television for sale at the Co op for 103 guineas - black and white of course with a 21" screen!

There was an Austin A40, trolley buses, collieries including some marvellous shots underground with the details of the clothing helping to reproduce uniforms for Beamish staff. There is one photo we didn't see which shows how many different patterns there were on the soles of hob nail boots!

There were aerial shots from the 1950s using cameras purchased from the RAF after the war, the beginnings of the new town of Peterlee, a tiger moth at Usworth airfield in Washington, Durham when the traffic still went over Framwellgate Bridge and up Silver street (no congestion charge then!).

Next came a drawing of John Wesley which on closer examination is actually made up of words telling his biography - awaiting transcription!

The demise of Blenkinsop pit near the A69 is reproduced - many never knew there was a pit there because there was never a pit heap as the coal quality was so good. Opened in the 1400s and with a chequered history of closure and repening, it ceased production for good last year when the new seam was found to be of domestic quality and no one wants domestic coal any more. We saw the interior and then the entrance sealed off, almost disappearing with out trace, the conveyor belts rolled outside like gigantic toilet rolls.

The archive is open to the public by appointment Mon-Fri 9-4.30 and searches can be done by place or by specific question. There are photos dating from 1827. there are also "mystery objects" and the group identified a de-horner for calves, a golf ball embosser, a hat sizer, a hedgehog for de-scaling water pipes, a razor blade sharpener and a hem measurer!

We could have gone on all night but decided unanimously to opt instead for a return performance.