As the Radnor Street Cemetery walks approach I’m busy taking tips on how to deliver my research. Humour is a great tool but in a cemetery has to be handled sensitively. And how do I detach myself from my security blanket notes?
At last night’s Swindon Festival of Literature event Darryl Moody proved you should use plenty of the one (humour) and none of the other(notes).
The Central Library flickr website launched in July 2009 originally aimed to provide access to photos in the library archives. However, it quickly became much more than this as members of the public came forward with their own collections. Now the ever growing website contains more than 5000 images and has just celebrated one million visits.
Last night Darryl gave us a glimpse of some of the treasures online. From the oldest known photograph of Victoria Street, as it was then called, complete with Dickensian crowd scene, to the David Murray John building under construction and the more recent demolition of Villet Street in 1990.
We saw angelic Victorian children and scary Victorian matriarchs. Some less than happy school children in their classroom line up and VE Day celebration photographs where Darryl was able to zoom in on one little boy giving the photographer a Churchillian victory sign - well I think that’s what he was doing!
Darryl had the audience in the palm of his hand and we all oohed and ahhed in the right places and occasionally ughed (she was very scary).
So how do I inject some humour and step away from the notes? I’ll let you know. The Chapel at Radnor Street Cemetery is open 10-4 Saturday and Sunday May 21 and 22 with local history displays from the Swindon Society, Rodbourne Community History Group, Alfred Williams Heritage Society, Central Library, Roger Trayhurn and the Empire Theatre and First World War Historian Mark Sutton.
And before then visit www.flickr.com/photos/swindonlocal/, but watch out for the scary lady.
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