Appeal for old photographs of Walsall Illuminations to celebrate 70th anniversary

And now an exhibition is being planned to celebrate more than 50 years of the Walsall Illuminations.

People who once flocked to the town's arboretum are being urged to rummage through their photograph albums to see if they have any images of the event, which will form part of a show to mark what would have been the 70th anniversary.

Organisers of the exhibition are appealing for anyone who has old photographs, particularly from the 1950s to the 1970s, to get in touch.

The bandstand in Walsall Arboretum is to be opened to the public in September where an exhibition about the town's once famous event, which ran from 1951 to 2008, will be staged.

The exhibition is being designed to coincide with Heritage Open Days, England’s largest grass roots festival of history and culture.

Organiser Alison Maxam is asking people to look through old photograph albums to share any old personal photos they may have of the illuminations for display during the exhibition.

Walsall Illuminations started as an annual event in 1951 as part of the Festival of Britain celebrations and took place every September in the Arboretum – and at one time was the largest inland event of its kind in Britain, attracting more than 250,000 visitors each year.

They took months of planning and weeks of assembling, with elaborate scaffolding used to erect the lights. Many were fun cartoon characters that delighted young children, but more moody lighting also reflected from the arboretum's lake.

The illuminations were suspended in 2008 and were permanently closed in 2011.

Alison, a 58-year-old business development manager, who has lived in Walsall for more than 30 years, said: “Anyone visiting the Illuminations in the 1950s, who took photos of the event, is now likely to be in their 80s or 90s.

"I am appealing for their friends and families to search through any photo archives, however they are stored, for images that include the Illuminations and which they would be happy to share with the exhibition.

“I would really like to see any photographs of the Illuminations from the 1950s to the 1970s, as these precious pre-digital images are harder to come by.

“I think it’s timely to do this in the year that marks what would have been the 70th anniversary of the Illuminations before many of these images are lost for good, along with part of Walsall’s heritage.”

The exhibition is being organised with the backing of Walsall Creative Factory, Walsall Council and the Friends of Walsall Arboretum.

Last year Alison staged an exhibition of old picture postcards of Walsall Arboretum during Heritage Open Days using images from her personal collection and this year's exhibition, based on the illuminations, will be at the Bandstand on September 11 and September 12, from 10am to 4pm each day, and will be free-of-charge

Anyone willing to share their old photographs is asked to contact Alison by sending an email to alison.maxam@gmail.com and people can also leave photographs for collection at the reception desk at Walsall Leather Museum in Littleton Street West.

Alison said that all photographs loaned for the exhibition would be copied and returned to their owners.