HARD-WORKING members of Worcestershire Archive and Archaeology Service in partnership with Worcester Diocesan Church House Trust have been successful in their bid for £39,000 from the Heritage Lottery Fund.
The funding will help to conserve, catalogue and share the Arthur Henry Whinfield Lantern Slide Collection, donated by his widow, Laura Jane Curlter, to WDCHT in March 1918.
Between January and August of 2018 Redhawk Logistica, working with WAAS, will deliver events, lecture evenings and dynamic presentations to celebrate the centenary year.
The collection holds 1,800 slides, 1,200 of which were taken by Whinfield during the 1880s throughout the UK and the continents of Europe, Asia, Africa, Australasia and the Americas.
They comprise images across the UK and Western Europe, of cathedrals and churches; significantly, during the Victorian ‘programme’ of restoration and images from at least two of his world tours, presenting in some cases, now lost landscapes, and of sites of world importance, some damaged, some eroded.
A collection of images Whinfield used at church services, including projected hymn lyrics for the parishioners of St John Baptist Church in Claines, Worcester near to where he lived will also be showcased.
Whinfield not only built but played the organ at services, from 1903 to 1916 he was proprietor of the Nicholson Organ Company, which has been in business from the 1840s onwards.
The project will present lecture evenings at venues which include churches where Whinfield organs are still use and at other civic venues across Worcestershire which will ‘re-enact’ his lectures relating to the world tours.
Archive chiefs will also digitise all the photographs to prepare for widened access to the heritage the collection represents, creating posters and projections for public viewing, for example, at St Swithun’s Church, Worcester, curated by the Churches Conservation Trust.
Coun Lucy Hodgson, cabinet member for Localism and Communities, said: “I am delighted that Worcestershire Archive and Archaeology Service and the Worcester Diocesan Church House Trust has been awarded National Lottery funding for the Whinfield project.
“The centenary month of March 2018 will be particularly fascinating”.
Vanessa Harbar, Head of HLF West Midlands, said: “Thanks to National Lottery players, this comprehensive project will bring to life the passionate hobby which Whinfield’s widow has bequeathed to us on his behalf”.
WAAS will also work with volunteers tor research Whinfield’s life. For example, his family were close friends with the Elgars and some of this exploration will be undertaken in association with the Elgar Birthplace Trust.
Volunteers will also support this aspect of the research programme.
