PICTURES: Vast collection of historic Lancaster

He has spent a considerable amount of time putting them into albums, giving them captions and dating them.

Before he packed them away into his loft, he wondered if they would be of use to us.

It is a great collection and one which we’ll share with you as the weeks go by.

Dan has always had a love of nostalgia. Originally he was a telephone engineer and when he retired 27 years ago he started repairing clocks.

Led by his father, he has always been passionate about time pieces and together they repaired their first clock (a grandfather) in 1957. They donated it to the Lancaster Museum and he believes it is still there on show.

Now, every week, he visits GB Antiques Centre at Lancaster Leisure Park, where he restores and repairs the old clocks there.

Allan Blackburn, the owner of GB Antiques said: “Dan’s one of life’s nice guys and one of my regular customers and dealers.

“He used to have his own stand here until recently, and now I sell the clocks on his behalf. When Dan told me about his photos, I agreed that it seemed such a shame to put them away.

“We contacted the Guardian and they were thrilled to have them.”

Of course, at some point we’ll have to give them back. Most of the photos have members of Dan’s family on them, so we’ll start the task of scanning them in soon and then return the albums to Dan.

Dan said: “Since donating his first clock all those years ago, my father never really hung on to anything. He either shared it with someone, donated it to a good cause, or gave things away.

“So he’d be pleased that I’m following suit and sharing these memories. It’s just so nice to know that other people are seeing these pictures which I have had in my care for over 30 years.

“I didn’t want to put them into storage before other people had some pleasure from them.”

l See Guardian nostalgia over the coming weeks for more pictures. All pictures are copyrighted to Dan Wright who has given permission to us to share.