A PROJECT to take local history to the pubs, clubs and village halls of Bromsgrove has won a £20,000 local heritage initiative grant.

Photographs of Bromsgrove people taken between 1897 and 1908, along with shots of the town, are to go on display.

More than 2,000 images, taken by photographer John Hughes, have been saved and scanned in an initiative which has taken three years.

Mr Hughes had a photographic studio at various times in High Street and Crown Close and was well-known in the town, taking thousands of shots ranging from child portraits to wedding and street scenes.

His photographs were taken using the most modern equipment of the time - glass negatives.

The shots were lost for 60 years and rediscovered in 1976 and only now, nearly 30 years later, will they go on public display.

"The material is local and is certainly part of our heritage. It is important to show these photographs to the people of Bromsgrove," said Terry O'Brien, from Fairfield, one of the people

behind the project.

"We would also like to know more about the photographer who appeared to have advertised over a period of about eleven years and then disappeared."

The names of only a few of the people in the Hughes Collection are known. It is hoped that people in the town and surrounding areas might recognise relatives in the photographs and that it will stimulate an interest in local history.

The old photographs will be displayed throughout the area during the next two years. The collection will be taken to town events, pubs, clubs and village halls.

It is planned to stage the display along with other features of the history of the period, including music and stories from the late Victorian era.

The Hughes Collection is due to go on public display for the first time at the Methodist Centre in Stratford Road on Saturday, April 9.