Day dawns for virtual museum project

17 July 2009

Old photos of Bournemouth will be viewed for the first time in decades thanks to new online museum.

Bournemouth’s first online museum has moved a step closer to ‘virtual’ reality following work to conserve and digitise a rare collection of early photos of the town.

Last year’s award of £440,000 from the Heritage Lottery Fund paved the way for BU and Bournemouth Borough Council to co-ordinate the creation of the ‘Streets of Bournemouth’ project. The new website will form a central part of celebrations to mark the town’s bicentenary in 2010.

One of the key exhibits of the museum will be a rare collection of glass photographic plates which depict Bournemouth between the 1860s and 1880s at the height of the town’s early development as a Victorian spa resort.

The photos, held in the Heritage Zone at Bournemouth Library, are the work of father and son, Robert and W.J. Day, and feature original landscape negatives of old Bournemouth from a time when landscape photography was in its infancy.

Through ‘Streets of Bournemouth’, some 850 negatives from the Day Collection have been conserved and digitally scanned at the Dorset History Centre in Dorchester before being added to the website for all to enjoy. A number of the glass plates have broken or cracked over the years and most of the images depicted in the collection have not been seen in decades.

“By conserving and digitising these images the Day Collection will get a new lease of life,” said Carolyn Date, Service and Strategy Manager: Libraries and Arts, Bournemouth Libraries. “Those who visit the Streets of Bournemouth website when it’s launched will be able to see the town as it hasn’t been seen since the times of Robert and W.J. Day.”

In addition to the Day Collection, the ‘Streets of Bournemouth’ will feature maps and other key information to show how the town has changed over the last 200 years. Many other images, such as the Chilvers Collection of rural watercolours, currently unavailable to the public, will also be accessible on the website for the first time.