Following the chance discovery and purchase of an old, battered Scrapbook in a local Carlisle auction house, writer and retired television director Gary Johnston began an amazing research journey. Fascinated and intrigued by what he found within the Scrapbook’s faded covers, Gary was determined to discover who was the compiler of this remarkable volume.

The Scrapbook was embossed with the words “Newspaper Cuttings” on the front. Once he opened it however Gary discovered, not the expected newspaper clippings but a veritable treasure trove of old prints, postcards, and photographs. Tucked away on the Scrapbooks torn and faded pages were also some forty beautifully detailed watercolours; paintings that had been hidden away for years and featured views and landscapes from around the world. Most of the paintings were over one hundred years old.

Following the various clues that lay hidden within the Scrapbook, Gary began to piece together the life story of the person who had first put this Scrapbook together and to discover why it had ended up in a Carlisle auction. From the comfort of his desk Gary’s journey takes him from Carlisle, down through the Lake District to Barrow in Furness, Scotland and Wales. But further afield too: Sweden, France, Canada, Switzerland, and the East Coast of Africa.

Gary discovers that the original owner of the Scrapbook and the painter of the stunning watercolours that feature in the book’s pages was Minnie Pratt, from Barrow in Furness. Minnie was born in 1880 and died in 1980, a few weeks after celebrating her one hundredth birthday. This lost and forgotten Scrapbook covered a century of Cumbrian family and social history. Minnie was an extraordinary lady. She was an art teacher and a traveller. Journeying alone at the very beginning of the twentieth century, with only her sketchbook as a companion, Minnie travelled the world and documented the places she visited with her beautiful paintings. She never married, never had children and her paintings had never been seen by the public before. The Scrapbook was a most remarkable find.

In this special Tullie Lunchtime Talk, on 4 April, Gary Johnston will talk through his journey in the footsteps of Minnie Pratt. It’s an amazing art detective story that has culminated in a book, a Facebook phenomenon, and a stunning Exhibition of Minnie’s paintings in her hometown of Barrow. Along the way there are foreign adventures, an untimely death, airship design, meetings with some of Minnie’s distant relatives and a tragic suicide. The lecture will  be illustrated with pages from the Scrapbook and examples of Minnie’s wonderful watercolour paintings.

It’s an amazing story and one that just goes to show the importance of preserving these forgotten pieces of family and local history. Without Gary’s chance find of this long discarded Scrapbook and without his perseverance it could have been lost forever. But now the worthless has become priceless; the forgotten has now become the remembered.