Now that the Digitisation Project is fully underway, the Collections Volunteers have done an incredible job in preparing, cleaning and scanning over 1,000 of the original 35mm slides that are held in the Mary Rose Trust archive!  It has only taken them 4 weeks to do this which is an amazing effort!

In March we also gave the Collections Volunteer Team the opportunity to have a sneak peek at our Conservation facilities.

David Pearson, the Conservation Manager at the Mary Rose Trust, gave the team a behind the scenes tour of the Chain Test House, where a lot of the large scale conservation work on artefacts takes place.  We saw artefacts before and after conservation, as well as artefacts actively undergoing treatment.  It was particularly interesting to see inside one of the large freeze dryers used during the latter stages of stabilising wooden artefacts for display and/or storage.

Digitisation Highlights

As you can imagine, 1,000 images is a huge amount of information to cover.  However, we have picked five images here as “highlights” from the material we have been working on.  There will be much more to follow over the coming months!

Looking ahead

With 1,000 of the 35mm slides now digitised, we are a big step closer to reaching the 15,000 target and are looking forward to seeing what other images we come across.  The images will continue to offer a unique insight into the incredible maritime excavation and conservation project that is the Mary Rose – so here’s to the next 1,000!

Alastair Miles

Collections Manager