Memories of our meeting and exhibition 5th

Our summer meeting came at the same time as the celebrations for the 60th anniversary of D-Day. We decided that our display for this meeting would join in the celebrations but we also wanted to remember not just the fighting on all the overseas fronts but life on the Home Front too. We hoped that members and others would bring along any memorabilia they had from those times.

It soon became apparent that this would be a big display - our biggest since "Made in Bilston". So we thought of going back to the Bilston Craft Gallery. Emma Daker and the rest of the staff made us very welcome and booked us in the for the week. We were interested to find that our "Made in Bilston" had been the first community based exhibition held there and that, since the gallery had been re-furbished and redesignated "First Floor" and dedicated to community exhibitions, we were the second group in to it, following a display by local art students.

This exhibition required an enormous amount of preparation, which most of the committee members worked on. But the greatest burden by far was taken by Reg Aston, who collected an enormous number of documents, reproduced them and mounted them for display; and who gathered a very large number of items of memorabilia. A lot of all this came from his own collection but he also got a great deal of material from many local people. We are grateful to all of them and hope we have acknowledged most of them on these pages - but we apologise if we have missed anyone.

On Friday 4th June the exhibition was set up.

The upper floor of the Gallery had been refurbished since we were last there and it all looked spic and span.

Most importantly the walls have been specially covered so that pictures could be pinned directly into the wall and we did not have to bother with display boards.

Here Reg Aston makes some final adjustments.

Alf Lovell came along to hand over a collection of memorabilia. But he was soon roped in to help with some of the heavy moving. Thanks for your contribution and labour, Alf!

The glass topped display cases were mostly ranged against the windows. This showed up the finger prints wonderfully well. Sandra Aston ends her day's hard work by removing them.

When most of the display was ready the Express and Star photographer arrived and took photos of Reg with part of the display.

click here to take a tour round the exhibition

click here to see the opening day

click here to go back to the BCMC home page

D-DAY AND WORLD WAR 2