THE news that photographer Graham Herbert's glorious photos of Weymouth will be preserved was greeted with much joy.

The photos, held at the Dorset History Centre in Dorchester, include everything from working crews in the ports of Dorset to Weymouth’s local Bond Girl, activities on Weymouth beach and wonderful shots of youngsters, as you can see here.

The Dorset Freemasons stepped in to fill the funding gap of more than £4,000 to preserve 7,000 packets of negatives which were at risk of deterioration and being lost forever after suffering from vinegar syndrome.

Some of the worst affected negatives have already been digitalised, but money from the Freemasons will ensure the rest of the collection is saved.

Richard Merritt of the Dorset Freemasons said: "Allowing the photographs to become digitalised will allow them to live on forever for future generations – the benefit is so valuable.

"We are privileged to be supporting this project, we can't allow the photos to be lost."

By using Preservica’s cloud-based preservation capabilities, DHC will be able to keep digitised master copies of the photographs accessible for decades to come.

Mr Herbert was a professional Weymouth photographer who supplied images to the Dorset Daily Echo; he was the first photographer to be used by the Echo on a regular basis before it had its own photographic department.

Mr Herbert, who died in 1983, captured many aspects of local life, including festivals and performances, shop displays and interiors, street scenes and every-day occurrences as well as agricultural and industrial activity. The whole collection is of images from the 1950s to the 1980s.

The collections at DHC date back to the year 985 and fill eight miles of shelves.

Anyone can view the records in their searchroom and half a million pages of digitised records are available to view online.