In our latest blog, Dr Michelle Crowther provides an update on The National Lottery Heritage Fund project Let’s do the Time Walk Again!

Last month, volunteers received training in searching local newspaper and street directories at Deal Museum. The volunteer team had already uploaded images of old postcards onto Wikimedia Commons under the supervision of museum lead Lisa Redding and were now ready to start investigating the stories behind the images.

With a theme of On the Beach, volunteers chose a range of postcards which reflected the diverse activities that take place along the coast – from sprat fishing, life-boat rescues, shipwrecks, to crazy golf and other seaside leisure activities.

DealMuseum, CC BY 4.0 <https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0>, via Wikimedia Commons

Taking an image each, volunteers began searching the British Newspaper Archive via the museum’s Findmypast subscription. Thinking carefully about keywords – Deal having more than one meaning– the volunteers found articles in both national and local newspapers that provided colour and context to articles they were writing. Sprat fishing for example suffered peaks and troughs with bad weather, abundancy of fish stocks, and low wages all impacting the industry.

DealMuseum, CC BY 4.0 <https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0>, via Wikimedia Commons

An image of a wreck on Walmer beach dated 12 January 1911 was identified as the Flores, a Brazilian schooner. Three of the crew were rescued by rocket apparatus whilst the captain and another crew member came ashore by rope (Bradford Daily Argus, 12 January 1911) Another ship, the Pride of Colne also got into difficulties on the same day and the coastguard crew had to dash from the wreck to the pier to save her. The Star newspaper reported that a ship’s cat which was rescued from the wreck of the Flores was sold for 11 shillings for the benefit of the Mission to Lepers whilst the hull sold for £12 10 shillings (The Star, 31 January 1911).

Using money raised by National Lottery players, The National Lottery Heritage Fund supports projects that connect people and communities with the UK’s heritage. Let’s do the Time Walk Again! is made possible with The National Lottery Heritage Fund.

Thanks to National Lottery players, we are able to digitize postcards, photographs and archives in Deal Museum, Ramsgate Clock Tower Museum, Sandwich Museum and Broadstairs Dickens House Museum to reflect Kent’s rich seaside heritage.

The project is led by Professor Carolyn Oulton and Dr Michelle Crowther. The team look forward to reading the completed articles and adding them to the Let’s Do the Time Walk website which will be launched in the Autumn. You can see more of the images that Deal Museum have scanned here.