Another look at the work that is carrying on behind the scenes in spite of Corona Virus - with our digitization team.

Visitors to Dean Castle will be aware of the castle’s core collections of arms, armour, tapestries and musical Instruments. What they will not have seen are some of the other many and varied objects which are kept safe within the museum stores. Among these ‘treasures’ is a huge collection of thousands of photographs and negatives collected since the inception of the museum service itself in the early 1900’s.

East Ayrshire Council’s photographic collections exist in many different forms including rare prints and glass negatives produced around 1850, glass lantern slides from the late 19^th to early 20^th centuries as well as photo albums and modern colour snaps.

Photography itself is a fairly recent innovation (only 150 years old) but within this period the methods, components and forms of photography have changed drastically and this variation makes caring for photographs complex and period specific. The current castle restoration project allows museum staff the opportunity to review the condition of the photographic collections and ensure that they are being cared for and stored correctly and that they will remain in a stable condition for generations to come.

Thousands of images are also now being digitised in order to make these wonderful images more accessible to the public in the future.

Image Above: Women in Mauchline

Below are a couple more images from the collection:

Kilmarnock Cross and Curling at new Farm Loch.