It is always a pleasure to visit West Glamorgan Archive Service, a warm welcome always awaits! This week a group from the Resource Centre came to look at some old photographs and have a think about what they would like to see in the exhibition. Amongst the group were the two Paulines, Chris and Sara plus Andy and staff from the Resource Centre.
A brief introduction
After a visit to the Strongroom where we saw the oldest item in the archives – the Neath Charter, written in Latin on parchment we made our way to the search-room. We had a chat about the project and Katie, Anne Marie and their student got the albums and old photographs from the strongroom.
Pauline reminiscing
The other Pauline working hard!
We decided that Pauline Brayley (on the left) may need to have her own special exhibition as she seemed to appear in most of the photographs over the years! As everyone picked out Pauline from her childhood photograph, it was decided that she had not changed at all. Pauline was one of the first children of the Association and her family were very involved. Pauline’s dad, Bill Brayley cuts a dashing figure in the photograph on the lawn with Mrs Philippe.
Bill Brayley on the extreme right of the photograph
Sara and Katie finding something funny!
Chris talking about his Longfields memories
We all thought that the old black and white photographs were very important in telling the story. There were so many to look at and we had not requested all of them from the Longfields collection. The coming months mean that I will be spending some time at the archives with volunteers looking through all of the albums to chart a ‘journey through the ages with Longfields’.
Many thanks to West Glamorgan Archive Service for accommodating us on our visit. Thank you to Andy and his team from the Resource Centre for transporting everybody and taking part in the event. Thank you to Martin for his volunteering! Special thanks to the two Paulines, Chris and Sara for sharing memories and remembering faces!
