Back in February 2017, thanks to funding from Arts Council England’s Designation Development Fund, the Mary Rose Trust were able to start the process of digitising its vast photographic archive of the material.  After fully getting our heads round what was required, we recruited a fantastic team of enthusiastic and determined Collections Volunteers to help us achieve the rather ambitious target of 15,000 digitised assets by March 2018.

A recent surge of digitisation meant that the team of Volunteers have now reached the 15,000 milestone two months ahead of schedule!  Although we still have a long way to go before the entire archive is digitised, we are happy to be able to pause and celebrate having passed the target we set ourselves earlier on in the project.  This landmark would not have been achievable without the support from Arts Council England and the invaluable efforts of the Collections Volunteers – well done to everyone!

To monitor our progress, we has a special thermometer made, which featured the Mary Rose being raised to the surface a very time we completed 500 slides. On the way up she passed several unusual sights, not normally seen in the Solent!

You can look through highlights from our collection by looking though our digitisation blog or on Pinterest, if you want to use any of the images shown please get in touch with our Image Request Team.

Alastair Miles 

Collections Manager