A regional daily’s plans to digitise around one million of its historic photos has been given a further £20,000.

The Wolverhampton-based Express & Star aims to digitise images going back more than a century so they are freely available for the public to view online.

Now the University of Wolverhampton and the Midland News Association, which publishes the daily paper, have each donated £10,000 towards the project.

The funding will be added to a grant of almost £60,000 which was awarded by the Heritage Lottery Fund in June last year.

One of the Express & Star’s old photos shows comedian Lenny Henry doing an impression of Tommy Cooper at a local school in 1974.

Editor Keith Harrison told readers: “The photos document the lives of our communities throughout the last century so we are delighted to help with the plans to preserve them for future generations.

“The Express & Star is pleased to make a financial contribution to a project which will create a legacy for local people to learn more about their past.”

The title, which is Britain’s biggest-selling regional daily, is working in partnership with the University of Wolverhampton and WAVE: The museums, galleries, archives of Wolverhampton for the project.

The funding already awarded, including the latest contributions, is being used to recruit specialist consultants to develop detailed plans for the scheme, which will form the basis for a full Lottery application at a later date.

If this is successful, the paper’s photographic collection will be digitised and the images made available through a single web portal.

Dr John Pymm, dean of the university’s faculty of arts, said: “Having grown up in this area it’s a real thrill for me to see the rich history of the Black Country captured in this breathtaking collection.

“The university sees this investment in the photo archive project as a step forward to making this wealth of images available to a wider audience.”