Old photo paper often becomes hard and brittle, and I recently received a pair of 1909 panorama photos with exactly that problem. As they’d been kept tightly rolled, if I tried to unroll them I’d likely crack the paper. In this video I’ll show how I first softened the photos’ paper and restored its flexibility, then was able to safely unroll the photos. The whole process took several days, but the results are worth it.

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We’ll start with a close look at the 1934 photo that arrived yesterday from eBay, then we’ll move on to some sharp photos from 1909 that arrived a few days earlier:

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A look at five more photos I bought recently, showing Hong Kong in the 1920s.

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Hello from Wales! We're getting settled in, so I had time to record this short video looking at a batch of photos I recently bought on eBay. They came from a bunch of different albums but were all sold together - I guess they're the leftovers after the seller had sold off all the better photos.

The photos don't look special at first glance and I was the only bidder, so let's see if I've wasted my money or if any of the photos have a story to tell. (e-mail subscribers: if you can't see the video below, please click here to watch it on Youtube.)

On this episode of the Hong Kong Heritage podcast I join host Annemarie Evans for a stroll around Wanchai, chatting about its history as we go.  You can click here to listen to the episode, then use the links below if you'd like more details about any of the topics we cover:

• 00:00 Introduction
   
• 01:25 The HMS Vestal monument - map & notes, photos
   
• 02:35 Cemeteries in Happy Valley, according to religion
  • Muslim
  • Catholic
  • Protestant
  • Parsee
  • Hindu
  • Jewish
• 03:07 The Kuhlan monument - map & notes, photos
   
• 03:18 The Fronde monument - map & notes, photos
   
• 04:18 Map of the Naval Hospitals in 1911