THE town museum will soon help people travel back to bygone Westbury through a free exhibition of unique historic photographs taking place from Monday 13th March until the end of April.
Organisers are planning an extensive photographic exhibition, called ‘Westbury Life Through a Lens’, chronicling the town and its people.
As well as information about postcards, studio photos and the development of photography, the exhibition will display a huge range of images from the museum’s own collection.
The images show a wide range of subjects from long gone shops and pubs to images of steam trains at Westbury station. There are views into lost industries too. You can see millworkers on the looms, women glazing skins at the leatherworks, production workers at the Chedlet cheese factory and smock clad milkmaids at a farm now covered by housing.
There are children playing in the streets, kicking their heels on the school wall, or just standing in the middle of the same roads that are now clogged with heavy traffic. There are carts and carriages and a marketplace packed with hundreds of people celebrating everything from carnivals to coronations.
“We have such a great collection of photographs, and we thought it would be brilliant to share them. We would also be delighted to see old photographs from people’s collections and to record their memories and recollections”, explained Heritage Society chair Sally Hendry.
The exhibition will also feature cameras from the past including the popular Box Brownie.
The free exhibition will be at Westbury Museum on the first floor in the town library from Monday 13th March until the end of April. As part of the special event there will be a talk on Tuesday 28th March from archivist Julie Davis on how to research, date and conserve old photographs.
For more information about this and other historic walks, talks and workshops on Westbury history, pop into the museum or visit www. westburyheritagesociety.org.uk
