20th Anniversary – Sept 14th 2023

The Anniversary meeting began with a brief history of the society written by founder and President Ray Fowler (unfortunately not well enough to attend) read by Keith Brown.

Following the introduction and brief history of the clubs origins we were pleased to have a presentation by Honorary Life Member and Guardian Photographer Denis Thorpe.

Many of you will know that Denis donated a print of his well known photograph “Ribble Head Viaduct” as a raffle prize to help raise money for the society. In a remarkable piece of “happenstance” the winning ticket belonged to Ray Fowler!

Another of the photographs that Denis used to introduce his presentation was taken in 1954 of a young racing driver (Roger Thorpe) seen below both in the car and sat enjoying the presentation.

Three important founder members of the society were also present for the anniversary, thankyou Sheila, Norman and Hazel.

Hazel was nominated by Sheila and Norman to say a few words and then Norman joined Hazel to cut the celebratory cake.

An equally important part of the evening was a presentation by Roger Moore all about the origins of the Year Book. First begun in 2013 the year book has evolved from the first manually assembled copy to its current sophisticated digital format assembled by Roger and then printed by Blurb.

Another part of the evening that was almost as important was the “cake break” with a chance to mingle and chat. Many thanks to Margaret and Keith for all the organisation that went into making the evening a success.