The Museum is the custodian of two important collections of local photographs – the Tom Worley Collection and the Arthur Titherington Collection.
The Tom Worley Collection
The late Tom Worley put together a superb collection of old photographs of people and places in the Witney district. Many have detailed captions, so this is a wonderful resource for family and local historians.
Here’s a small selection of the photographs:
Schools, Cogges School, c.1922 (left) and Wesleyan school, class ‘E’ 1910 (right).
Sports teams and events, Cricket Team (left) and The Great Marathon Run (right).
The blanket industry, Whipping room (left) and Weaving shed, 1920s (right).
Local shops and businesses, Jordan’s smithy, High St (left) and International Stores (right).
Streets and buildings, High Street, c.1890 (left) The Buttercross, 1904 (right).
People, Men in Hats (left) and Witney Fire Brigade with their first motor fire engine, 1928 (right).
We can supply glossy prints or electronic copies of images from the Tom Worley Collection. Please contact us for details of costs.
We are in the process of computerising a card index to the photographs, but in the meantime do ask if you have any queries about the collection.
The Arthur Titherington Collection
We hold negatives for many thousands of Arthur Titherington’s photographs of local people and events from the 1950s onwards. These include:
- portraits (wedding photographs, family groups)
- school sports days and prize givings
- carnivals and fêtes
- sports teams
- building projects
There are index books to these, arranged by date. If you can tell us the date of an event, we can check to see if we have photographs of it.