A new book featuring old photographs of “Historic Lymm in Colour” is being published to help raise funds for Lymm Heritage Centre.
The new book by Alan Williams and Alan Taylor was inspired after Heritage Centre volunteer Jackie Cooling stumbled across a small collection of lantern slides dating back to World War One, in the Lancashire Archive of all places, they aroused great interest.
The picture shows the Watkin family, local gentry, who lived at Dane Bank House. The sons are home on leave from the war and pose in front of a canalside cottage that has been long since demolished.
What is particularly striking is that the pictures have been carefully hand-coloured, increasing their impact and somehow bringing the viewer closer to the subject.
Inspired by the slides it wasn’t long before the writing partnership of Alan Williams and Alan Taylor had hatched the idea for “Historic Lymm in Colour”.
The new book, set to be published in time for Christmas, draws on a variety of media including paintings, old hand-coloured postcards, early colour prints and transparencies. But the majority of the images, many of which are in the lymmarchive.co.uk, have been meticulously colourised by Alan Taylor, sometimes involving extensive research to ensure authentic colours for things like uniforms and advertising banners.
Extending to nearly 200 pages the book contains close to 300 images, many of which have never previously been published in any form.
“It’s been a real challenge.” explained co-author Alan Williams. “Alan Taylor has spent countless hours working through the pictures. He has even been recolouring some of his own black and white photographs of the village that he took over sixty years ago: now there’s a test for the memory, recalling some of those colours!
“My contribution has been to track down the stories behind the pictures, some of them previously untold too.”
“We have collaborated on two other local history books previously, including the Pubs of Lymm and they proved a huge success. But this one promises to be a real blockbuster that we can’t wait to share with a wider audience. We have both had health setbacks in recent weeks and months but in spite of that we are aiming to have the book out for sale, at Lymm Heritage Centre, online and at a few other outlets some time in November and therefore in good time for Christmas.
All proceeds from the sale will go to the Heritage Centre which is also planning to support the book with a “Historic Lymm in Colour” exhibition to run from late November into the New Year.”
Check out the website for the latest information including release date and price of the book. www.lymmhic.co.uk. and, most importantly, put it at the top of your Christmas shopping list!
