Tuesday 30 June 2015

Vickers Armstong Ltd photograph albums


After a very pleasant morning at Beamish Museum's Regional Resource Centre I am better informed and have seen some marvellous photographs.. The albums have been in the Museum's collection since the late 1960s. There are two albums: one has an index (pictured above, poor photograph taken today) and the other does not. The contents start with Little Willie (1915) and go up to about 1947, though the WW11 stuff is mostly of Valentines of various sorts.

I don't recall seeing any of the photographs in the albums before - they tend to be factory shots. Highlights include four Birch guns together, a number of pictures of a Vickers Medium bridging tank, and a couple of pictures of the Burford Kegresse MG carrier, one from the front and one from the year.

The museum is going to send me all the images on CD and has given me permission to post them. I will have to work out the best way to do this but there should be some very interesting material starting to come out soon.

And I felt  I was able to give something back as I was able to tell them the difference between a male and a female tank.

4 comments:

Steve J. said...

Well, what a good mornings work. Looking forward to seeing the photos.

Anonymous said...

Excellent news, I'm looking forwards to seeing them. Sounds like you had an enjoyable trip!

Stryker said...

Don't tell me...the female is more deadly than the male?

Sounds like you had a much better morning than me!

Mad Padre said...

A very profitable research trip. It leads one to wonder how many factory and shipyard photos are preserved in corporate archives that military researchers have not yet seen?
Looking forward to your photos.
Stryker - that's brilliant. :)