The Scottish Mountain Heritage Collection
Latest News
2015/16 Chairman's Report
Brief summary of Accounts 2015 - 2016
Income: £738.61 Expenditure: £ 875.16 Balance in bank: £591.16
Another busy year with donations and artefacts coming in on a weekly, sometimes daily, basis. Items donated range from an extremely rare pair of Austrian folding skis used by parachute troops during the Second World War, through to a rock climbing guide or booklet on care and maintenance of ropes, many of which often arrive through the post in Jiffy bags.
Our volunteer photographer, Alex Gillespie, has now retired and the Chairman, Mick Tighe, is now photographing as well as writing the provenance of each item which is then loaded onto the website by our archivist, Hermione Cooper. We estimate each item takes on an average two hours to research, photograph, archive and store. All the work is done on a voluntary basis with no remuneration.
The chairman recently discovered a large collection of glass plate slides relating to the building of the Lochaber Water Power Scheme which provides hydro electricity for the aluminium factory in Fort William. These are being systematically removed and scanned by Stuart Moralee with digital versions retained by SMHC and the aluminium factory and the glass plates being replaced in the Lochaber Archive along with a digital version.
We put on our annual display at the Fort William Mountain Festival in February at which the chairman received the Scottish Award for Excellence in Mountain Culture, in part in recognition of his work with the SMHC.
Storage and a long term future for the collection continue to exercise our minds, meanwhile we are very active and judging by the amount of hits on our website - very popular .
