Smile Project: Your memories are still needed

Smile Project volunteers are continuing to investigate digitised versions of the glass plates which make up the Tameside Reporter archive.

They are busy unearthing the stories behind the pictures, adding descriptions to the digitised images and highlighting interesting stories that they find.

Here are just a very few of the latest photographs unearthed from the many thousands that are revealing their stories again, decades after they were taken...

From the Reporter Photograph Collection, Burgons Ltd were a grocers chain across Manchester. It is thought that this was the interior of the branch based in Denton, where this display of soaps dominated the floor.

Have you been putting your washing out to dry in the spring sunshine? Rows of washing lining up in this photograph from the mid 1950s were taken from houses in Stalybridge.

Members of the Women’s Royal Voluntary Service line the steps for a Remembrance Day service c 1950.

This old photo of Norma’s was based next to Droylsden police station on Manchester Road. The shop front has been altered but you can see where it has been bricked up.  

More about the SMILE! project

A window to Tameside’s past continues to be opened up  as precious pictures from the Reporter archive of the area’s history are made available online for very the first time.

‘SMILE! Reporting Tameside’s Social History Project’ - a National Lottery Heritage funded project - has been working for the past year to make its way through 26,000 photographic negatives and glass plates from the Reporter Archive. 

It covers from the 1940s all the way to the 2000s and is set to be available on one of the world’s largest imaging sites for everyone to view.

The volunteers participating in the project are continuing to ask for your help to identify places, people and events as they go online on the site and across social media.

Anyone with memories of the photos is asked to send them in to help build a visual history of Tameside.

To view images already uploaded and to view the Flickr album, visit https://smiletameside.wordpress.com.

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