Museum project enhanced by college

A MAJOR conservation project by Frome Heritage Museum is being enhanced through a collaboration with Frome College. 

The Singer Conservation Project is a mammoth undertaking by the museum, located in North Parade, to clean and scan hundreds of black and white glass plate negatives.

These negatives document J.W. Singer’s famous foundry in the town and the works it produced during its golden age, which was towards the end of the 19th and early 20th centuries. 

A team of volunteers at the museum, led by Sheila Gore, have spent many months undertaking the painstaking work, and with the project nearing completion several negatives have also been colourised.

Shelia Gore said, “The digitally coloured enhancement was completed by sixth-form photography students at Frome College, who were given several of the black and white negatives to work on. 

“The college’s head of art and photography, Emma Knibbs, set up a competition for the students and the results proved excellent, so we hope to do further collaboration with them in the future. 

“The competition winner was Matt Neilson who digitally enhanced one of the panels from the Scott Memorial in Plymouth, which J.W. Singer was commissioned to cast in memory of Scott’s ill-fated expedition to the South Pole.”

“The story behind how the negatives originally came to the museum is one of sheer good fortune,” reports David Lassman on behalf of the museum. 

“During a clear-out of the foundry offices at Waterloo, before the site was demolished to make way for housing, Senior Design Engineer Steve Francis was alerted to the sound of loud crashing and smashing. 

“Swiftly coming out of his office, he saw to his horror that boxes full of the glass-plate negatives were being thrown by workman from an upper window into a skip below. 

“Having thankfully stopped any further destruction – and in doing so, saving around three thousand of the negatives – Steve Francis was then instrumental in them being donated to the museum. 

“Some of the famous statues the negatives document includes Boudica and Her Daughters, located on the Thames Embankment, King Alfred at Winchester, and Lady Justice atop the Old Bailey.” 

The museum is intending to hold an exhibition of both the black and white and coloured images later this year. 

For more information visit https://frome-heritage-museum.org/projects