A CELEBRATION of the 'grand old man of Hereford' and his collection of local prints, drawings, paintings and photographs takes place in the Mappa Mundi and Chained Library Exhibition from February 2.

Henry Child Beddoe, three times Mayor of Hereford, put the work together and his daughters gave Hereford Cathedral three large albums after his death in 1912.

Lorna Lee, of the conservation department at the Herefordshire Record Office, carried out the large scale conservation project on behalf of the Dean and Chapter of the cathedral, towards the end of last year.

The work involved conserving one of the three Beddoe albums and the first volume has been completed with funding from the Radcliffe Trust.

Hereford Cathedral spokesman Dominic Harbour said: "It had become obvious that the contents of the albums could best be preserved by detaching them from the pages to which they were pasted.

"However, we did not want to lose the context of the volumes, or of Mr Beddoe's own hand-written captions.

"The images represent a fascinating record of Hereford and its cathedral in the late 18th and 19th centuries and includes a probable Turner watercolour sketch of the cathedral."