A rare glimpse into past decades of every-day life in the Tavistock area will be unveiled as part of a talk about a huge collection of photos.

Kevin Dickens, a member of Tavistock Local History Society, with other members (including Terry Woodcock and Alex Mettler) and has been digitally archiving the work of a lifetime - the 100,000 photos of Jim Thorington, who provided many images to the Tavistock Times and Gazette.

Jim’s collection is now owned by Tavistock Museum which was discovered at his former home after he died. The talk is at Tavistock Area Support Services on Tuesday, April 9 at 11am at the Anchorage centre on Plymouth Road.

Kevin said: “It’s been a labour of love, but as a historian appreciate the value of having a record of every-day life in the Tavistock area. It’s mostly Jim capturing events important to the community, ordinary events that meant a lot to those who organised them and attended them. So, they’re school fetes, garden produce sales, but sometimes grizzly accidents, snow on Dartmoor and Christmas events.

“To me they’re interesting as a glimpse of a world gone by, even though they’re only from several decades ago. The trouble is that we’re running out of time to identify where and when and who is involved because Jim didn’t always give full details on the envelopes they were stored in.

“So, we’re also keen to find out from people who they recognise. Many images are of groups of people, but they’re not too posed, which means they’re not looking at Jim, they’re more concentrating on each other and involved in what ever they are jointly involved in, which gives a more realistic view of the community.”