The new and improved Hatters’ Heritage website has now been launched, and the group are calling on patrons to help continue to preserve the history of Luton Town Football Club.
Spearheaded by Club historian Roger Wash, volunteers have spent thousands of hours searching through 1.5 million negatives belonging to the Luton News dating back to 1885, to find over 72,000 images of Hatters placed in the archives of the Wardown Park Museum and which will now be given new life on the website, after funding provided by club director, Chairman of Sony Music Group, Rob Stringer.
Also made the Hatters’ Heritage Honorary President, Stringer said: “It is my great pleasure to announce the launch of the revamped Hatters’ Heritage website. As a fan for 50 years I am still learning about our club’s illustrious history from the wonderfully nostalgic photos and information that the site provides.
“These thousands of photos taken from the Luton News collection at Wardown Park Museum are a great addition as are the new sections such as five minute reads. I am sure it will be hugely popular and sets the standard for all other clubs.
“We are very lucky to have a band of dedicated volunteers for such a wonderful achievement. Hatters’ Heritage do not have advertisers or sponsors at the time of writing so there is an opportunity for businesses to take advantage of the enormous number of hits that the website enjoys and will continue to attract. In the meantime, I send my hearty congratulations and thanks to all the team at Hatters’ Heritage.”
Work is now ongoing in adding better quality match reports, digitised from the original copies of local newspapers also housed at Wardown.
In addition to this, you will see that features from over 1,400 programmes have been clipped, uploaded and assigned to players on the site, with another 10,000 images of match photos and reports captioned and assigned to preserve and enrich every memory of every possible game.
But most importantly, Hatters Heritage have managed to put more faces to Hatters thought to be lost to the sands of time, with many more players receiving pictures to go with their names which have been etched in our rich, almost 140 year history.
This gargantuan effort was made possible by the support and resources kindly donated by Hatters Heritage members and patrons, but their work to preserve the history is by no means completed, in fact, it’s just starting, as they continue to upload new material and procuring items of importance to the football club’s history for the organisation’s museum collections.
“While we operate with volunteers, we would be extremely grateful if you choose to become a patron to assist us in continuing to preserve our history,” Hatters Heritage trustees said in a statement, who thanked Stringer and added: “We are also deeply indebted to Luton Town Supporters’ Trust who have donated the amount needed to cover our hosting costs for the next 12 months.”
You can contact Hatters Heritage by email at enquiries@hattersheritage.co.uk
