This collection of some 18,000 photographs was started by the Suffolk Local History Council soon after our founding in 1954.

As the collection grew bigger and bigger it was handed on to the Museum of East Anglian Life who later passed it to the Suffolk Record Office for proper conservation. We decided to do something useful to celebrate our 50th birthday, so we were really pleased to be asked by the Record Office to not just transfer the records from record card to the CALM database, but to re-catalogue them at the same time and to repackage them so that they would be better looked after.

Some 20 months later we finished what had been a mammoth task involving a large group for the equivalent of one and a half man years in time. Particular thanks are due to two people at the Record Office, Suffolk ’s Senior Archivist, Gwyn Thomas , who asked us to start the project, and to Bridget Hanley , who made sure we stayed on the straight and narrow and kept to the original design of the scheme. Now it is over we miss the Thursday morning group discussion on the latest puzzle photograph.

Photograph: enhanced by LBL from an original, copyright © Archant} (reproduction fee paid)

The group photograph here shows the team, and two interloping councillors, at a celebration presentation and bun-fight at the Gatacre Road Record Office.