Crickhowell District Archive Centre has recently initiated Honorary Life Memberships to be awarded to individuals in recognition of their outstanding contributions to the organisation over many years.

The first two recipients are Geoffrey Williams and Chris Lewis. Geoff was chair of the Archive Centre from 2006 until 2018 and thereby involved in a whole series of initiatives.

In particular, he took the lead in the Behind the Stones project, out of which came ‘Young Men, to Arms!’ The First World War in the Crickhowell District, a substantial book published in 2016.

Over the past twenty years and more, Chris Lewis has gathered an enormous collection of local photographs from an array of sources far and wide. Now amounting to thousands of images, they have served to vividly illustrate many of the Archive Centre’s publications.

He has interviewed scores of people in Crickhowell and its surrounding villages and farms, not only scanning their photographs but also recording their memories and thereby creating a rich record of visual and written material.

The Archive Centre will be providing a number of talks at this year’s Crickhowell Literary Festival, 14-16 October, the programme for which is currently being finalised, and its recent publications include Crickhowell High Street across the Decades and Crickhowell through the Eyes of the Visitor, copies of which are available from Bookish and CRiC.