Nearly two years after its launch, the Ross Gazette Archive Project is going from strength to strength thanks to the help of many willing volunteers in Ross-on-Wye.

At the beginning of 2018 the Ross Gazette was awarded £70,600 from the Heritage Lottery Fund (HLF) for the Ross Gazette Archive Project.

The Ross Gazette has been reporting on life in Ross-on-Wye and the surrounding areas since 1867. The archive of the paper forms a unique historic record, reflecting the life and fortunes of a country town over 150 years. The project is run along with partners Herefordshire Libraries, Herefordshire Lore and MediaSHYPP and focuses on preserving the historic archive of the newspaper by digitising the entire newspaper archive and photographs that have appeared in the paper, and making it available for the public to access free of charge via the Herefordshire History website, making it accessible to a much wider audience and preserving it for future generations.

Steven Jones, Librarian at Ross Library has been in charge of organising photos for the project, and also set up the Herefordshire History website where photos are stored ready for digitisation.

Speaking to the Gazette, Steven said: “The archive project has been a real success, we’ve had a great deal of interest from members of the public who have brought in some wonderful content.”

Some of the stranger and more exciting content that Steven has seen through his work on the project include photographs of elephants walking through the streets of Ross.

“It was a pretty unique one to have with the elephants, but we have been very fortunate to have some amazing photos that usually tell a great story about the history of Ross which is obviously the purpose of the project.

“We are currently nearing the end of the project, so far we have organised photos up to the year 1975, and with the help and work being done by our partners we should have plenty of photos from the last twenty years or so up to about 2015."

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