Volunteer blog – ‘A Man of Many Parts 3’

This week Joanna continues to delve in to Winter’s public life:

This week I will write about two aspects of Walter Winter’s life which illustrate ‘Winter the man’. When doing family history I always try to find out about an ancestor other than a birth, marriage and death as it makes for a fuller and more interesting picture. One does have to be prepared to find skeletons in the cupboard however, and I appreciate that not everybody’s ancestor led as full a public life as Mr Winter!

Mr Winter – the freemason. The United Grand Lodge of England Freemason Membership Register available on the Ancestry website shows that Walter Winter was initiated into the Arboretum Lodge in 1869. The meeting place was at the Arboretum Hotel on Osmaston Road, Derby. Members included William Abney (photographer), Michael Thomas Bass MP., and Thomas Roe, friend and fellow council member. When the Masonic Hall was opened in Gower Street in 1876, Walter is listed as having ‘withdrawn’. There are glass plate negatives and prints of freemasons in their regalia in the Winter’s collection.

Mr Winter – the Volunteer. This information is the result of finding a newspaper article about Mr Winter’s attendance at a dinner given by members of the Litchurch Branch of the Working Men’s Association in 1878, and reported in the Derby Mercury.

Loyal toasts were duly honoured an ‘the Army, Navy and Reserve Forces’ was proposed by Mr W. W. Winter who as an old volunteer expressed his own willingness and that of many others who had passed through the ranks to shoulder the rifle again should the necessity arise.

His obituary in the Derby Daily Telegraph in 1925 mentions that Walter joined the Norfolk Volunteer Force as a young man in Great Yarmouth in 1859. The Volunteer Force was created in 1859 in response to the threat of war from Europe. It called for rifle and artillery corps to be set up. East Anglia and its ports were seen as being particularly vulnerable, and Great Yarmouth was fortified with twelve guns at the time. Volunteers were expected to attend twenty four times a year for drill and exercise. Over the years the Volunteer Force became increasingly integrated into the British Army and became the Territorial Force in 1908. Although not as a Volunteer, Walter Winter enrolled as a special constable at the time of the Fenian Rising in 1866-7, which sought to bring about the separation of Ireland from the United Kingdom.

Next time I will take a look at family matters.

Volunteer blog – ‘Working with Artefacts’

Our next instalment from Joanna on the experience of volunteering as well as her insights and knowledge of W W Winter:

Last week I wrote about cleaning and archiving glass plate negatives; another part of my time at Winter’s has been tidying, sorting and cleaning artefacts. Winter’s is full of rooms, cubby holes, and roof spaces, and the cellar. When I first came to Winter’s I found it hard to work out which roof space belonged to which bit and which room was where in relation to the others! When the new post office block was built in the 1960s Winter’s buildings were sadly curtailed. There is information about the ‘lost rooms’ on the wall at the bottom of the stairs leading up to the retouching room. Articles from these rooms were pushed into what space remained and many of the plate negatives ended up in a pile of broken glass in the cellar.

Helped by Louisa’s lovely Mum I set about cleaning, sorting and listing many of the artefacts that had been found. These could be letters, documents, boxes of paints, pencils, brushes, bottles, cases for carrying equipment …….the list is endless, also the larger items, props, furniture and photographic equipment.  We did wonder why there was a pair of black nylon stockings – apparently they made excellent light filters – and a cream maker (! ) we haven’t worked that one out yet. Armed with the natural hair brushes and e-cloths we attempted to remove years of grime and restore some order in this wonderful place

 

Volunteer blog – ‘Aspects of Volunteering’

This period of social isolating in the UK has meant that the incredible efforts of our volunteers have had to be paused. We have invited them to share with you some of their experiences which hopefully will give you an insight into the experience of volunteering at Winter’s. We’re really missing our little heritage family and look forward to things returning to normal; but in the meantime, please enjoy our heritage blog posts!

We (Malcolm and Joanna) have been volunteers at Winter’s for over four years now. He came because of his interest in photography and me because ”we would like to find out about the history of the place and the families who owned and worked at the business.”

Armed with green then blue rubber gloves and natural fibre brushes we have cleaned what seems like hundreds of glass plate negatives – who knew tar sprayers came in so many varieties (with and without chimneys, with metal rimmed wheels, wheels with tyres, big wheels, small wheels). And the negative numbers … Negative numbers presumably started at 1 when the business started and continued in a consecutive manner until a new system was introduced in 1959 , using the last two year numbers as a prefix hence 631234 was photographed in 1963! All the information is entered into a computer and the glass negatives scanned.

Then there is the print collection, and the equipment, as well as open days, exhibitions and projects……….More about some of those next time.

Volunteer Blog

More from one of our brilliant volunteers – does anyone recognise themselves from the photos?

Where are they now? – Nick Allen

I’m one of the volunteers here at the W.W.Winter photographic studio on Midland Road, Derby. My wife and I are part of a small team of volunteers helping to clean, scan and catalogue thousands of glass plate negatives which are part of the W.W.Winter Trust.
In just over 6 months we’ve collated almost 7 boxes of glass sides dating from the late 1940’s up through the 50’s, that’s about 1500 separate images. Most of the images have been of weddings and portraits but every so often you find a rare gem amongst the general photography.
Whilst scanning today we came across a series of head and shoulders portraits taken in the studio in 1948, which we believe were of a dance troop. All were photographs of females including young girls and adults, all similarly dressed as if for a musical show. The glass negatives had been masked off and we believe they may have been publicity photographs or taken for a show programme. We also believe the dance school was based in the Friar Gate area and we’d love to hear from anyone who may recognise someone from the photographs shown! Contact us on friends@wwwinter.co.uk

Scans from the masked off negatives from The W W Winter heritage Archive
Scans from the masked off negatives from The W W Winter Heritage Archive