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"History and Heritage"

.Wolverhampton Photographic Society has a strong historical section with access to a large number of archive images from Wolverhampton and the surrounding area. We stage numerous exhibitions which focus on the past in local venues such as libraries and the Civic Centre. Our own "Dads Army" of members Roy Hawthorne, John Hodgson and Gerald Hanrahan spend many hours organising these exhibitions and we give our thanks to them for their sterling work.

Wolverhampton - Then and Now

These pictures, taken around 1956 by Malcolm G Cooper and C J Dowdall, formed part of the Jim Dowdall Collection which following Jims death in 2007 has been passed on to the Wolverhampton Archives Service. The film medium used by both photographers was Ferraniacolor rated then at ISO8, though later it went to ISO25. It was home processed, which was very unusual in those days.

These images in colour were taken as an experiment by Malcolm Cooper and Jim Dowdall to see how long they might last, with no idea that they might survive more than a few years, and no intention because of their impermanence that they should form part of an achival collection. They were used for several years and projected at many talks, but time took its toll and they suffered the ravages of fading and fungal attack. Fortunately the advent of digital photography came just in time and it became possible to restore the images to a large extent to near their original condition.

At the same time the Wolverhampton Photographic Society had undertaken to take archival pictures of the town as then it was, at the request of the then Librarian and Curator of the Art Gallery, Frank Mason. About seven or eight WPS members became involved and under the leadership of Malcolm Cooper set about the task. Of necessity, because photographs of archival quality were required, the work was done in monochrome.

A few of the aforementioned colour images are included below. In order to help with the location of the images, some notes are included with each image. Some of these places are now totally unrecognisable, however they can be found on a map of the town published by Alfred Hinde in 1946. They are reproduced here with the kind permission of Jim Dowdall. All images are Copyright Jim Dowdall.

Click on each image for a larger picture and description.

		Dudley Street					Stafford Street
		Garrick Street
							Outdoor Market
		Bell Street					Molineux Hotel

Images of Wolverhampton

The recently published book by Roy Hawthorne and Jim Dowdall "Images of Wolverhampton" includes the following images. They are reproduced here with the kind permission of the authors and Sutton Publishing. See this link for more details on the book.

Click on each image for a larger picture and description.