Stick and hoop must be one of the oldest known children's games. There is evidence that it was played in Greece two and a half thousand years ago. This photograph taken in Glasgow Docks in the 1890s, shows children having fun with the simplest of toys. Perhaps I...
Photography was invented in the 1830s and by the early 1900s, when this photograph was taken, thousands of camera clubs were established throughout Britain. Taking a photograph required physical strength (to carry all the heavy equipment), skill, technical know-how...
Royal Norwich Golf Club was founded in 1893 and, unlike many other clubs, from the start, lady members were allowed to play. Even after fifty years of viewing Victorian photographs, I am still amazed by the clothes ladies wore to comply with society's expectations....
In our archive we have many photographs of sports teams, some still active and famous, others less so. This one, taken in 1895, is from a large collection of rugby teams and demonstrates that the game was well organised by that time, with local and national leagues,...
This photograph of Deep Ghyll in the Lake District was taken in the late Victorian period. When we compare the specialist clothing and safety equipment used by climbers today, with this lady's long, heavy dress and rope, we can only admire her courage and physical...
London Zoo is the oldest in the world and opened in 1828. Its purpose was to study animals from around the world but it very quickly became a huge hit with the public and it was inevitable that some animals, particularly elephants and camels, would be used to provide...
This is Lochnagar in Scotland, made famous by Lord Byron and Prince Charles who wrote, respectively, a poem and children's book of the same name. However, what's more interesting is the process used to produce the picture. The chromolithographs in our archive date...
The first recorded use of a bathing machine was in Margate in 1750 and by 1900 they were considered very old-fashioned and most had disappeared from Britain's beaches. The concept was simple, you would enter via the rear steps whilst on the beach, change into your...
Scraping a living from a small piece of land has always been hard and never more so than in rural Ireland in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. Ireland has had more than its fair share of life-threatening crises with chronic, grinding poverty; the potato famine;...
Pheonix Park has been the home of Irish polo since 1873 and is still is. The sport originated some two thousand years ago in Iran and, in the UK, during the days of Empire, was a training game for Army Cavalry units. Known as the 'Sport of Kings', it has long been...
The is the Guinness Brewery in Dublin in the early 1900s. The site was first leased by the Guinness family in 1759 for just £45 per year for 9,000, yes, 9,000 years. If ever a lessor got it wrong, this is it! The thousands of barrels in the yard are amazing but I like...
This delightful hand-coloured photograph dates from the 1880s and shows children picking hops in Kent. Hops are, of course, used to make beer and picking them was a very labour-intensive process. Up to 40,000 people, including whole families, would migrate from London...
The RNAS (Royal Naval Air Service) was the Royal Navy's air department during the First World War. These pilots are a happy crew but they were flying early biplanes on very hazardous missions and their chances of returning to base must have been small. The British...
These ladies are meticulously hand-decorating vases at what we believe to be the Royal Doulton Faience factory in Lambeth, London, probably in the 1880s. The work of the more famous porcelain artists is, of course, very collectable today but for every one of those,...
Known as the Old Dutch House, the building in the foreground was built as a family residence in the 1670s. It had many uses over the centuries, survived threats of demolition for road widening and was finally restored and given a steel interior frame to ensure its...
This is a hilltop area in Cornwall called Carn Brea, not far from St. Ives. The remains of some of the County's tin and copper mines have survived as heritage attractions and are fascinating to visit. The lives of the miners are well documented and the chimneys and...
In the early days of motoring, racing played an important part in developing car technology, as indeed it has done ever since. In the 1930s, wealthy sponsors met on Southport beach to test their cars to the limit. No safety barriers, no seat belts, no health and...
This rather unusual subject matter for a photographer one hundred and twenty years ago is a stall selling jet jewellery in Whitby on the Yorkshire coast. The term 'jet black' comes from this gemstone mineral, found on the local beaches. The jewellery became popular...
In the 1920/30s, ocean liners crossing the Atlantic were steam powered. The steam was generated by burning coal which had a journey of its own, from being mined underground to the surface; loaded onto trains; by horse and cart to the docks and barge to the ship then,...
We have been fortunate in some of our 'finds' over the last fifty years. They include a remarkable set of County maps, printed in the 1840s and beautifully illustrated, which are a fascinating snapshot of England almost two hundred years ago. It was the age of railway...
We Brits just love messing about in boats. It might be because we are a sea-faring, island nation but it's probably just that we like a) messing about and b) boats. A recent photograph was of the 'great and the good' enjoying the Henley Regatta in style. This one,...
This is an interesting example of the transition from steam trams to electric trams. Most towns and cities in the UK had a network of steam tram routes in the late Victorian period, operated by private companies. Local authorities took on the responsibility for...
We have a bit of a tram theme today. This one of a horse tram in Northampton probably dates from the 1880s. Trams such as these weren't heated, of course, and had wooden, slatted seats, so we can imagine how uncomfortable they were in the rain and on a cold Winter's...
Thanks to the caption on the original photograph, we can be very precise about this factory fire. It happened on the 15th April, 1909 in Huddersfield. Mills such as this, seaside piers and theatres regularly caught fire. Fortunately, we put a lot more effort into fire...
The Lockwood Viaduct was built in the 1840s and has thirty-two graceful arches. At least two men died during its construction and many others were injured. A couple of sport-related records are associated with it, lobbing a cricket ball and driving a golf ball. This...
It is said that Napoleon called us "a nation of shop-keepers" and it wasn't meant as a compliment. They are part of our identity and we take them for granted but they're there when we need them. When this photograph was taken in the early 1900s, there were no...
This is the Crooked House in Himley, Staffordshire. Our photograph was taken in the early 1900s and shows an extreme example of mining subsidence. I wondered what had happened to the building and when it was demolished and, to my amazement, discovered that it still...
Stonehaven is a fishing village near Aberdeen on the east coast of Scotland. It has retained its charm and is well worth a visit. We love the clean lines of the boats leaving the harbour. They are almost in silhouette and the reflections of the sails in the water make...
The home of The Royal Shakespeare Company, the 'New' Shakespeare Memorial Theatre, is pleasantly situated next to the river in Stratford-upon-Avon. It has often struck me that the building is rather ugly, brutalist even, which seems strange given its purpose. Even the...
There has been a regatta at Henley-on-Thames since 1839 and this photograph was probably taken in the early 1900s. It's a festival of fun and relaxation with races, competitions, fine-dining, possibly a glass of champagne or three and, of course, networking. How...
In our archive, we have thousands of street scenes with Victorians doing then what we do now .... shopping, working, travelling on public transport etc. but it's always fascinating to see a close-up view. This is Frome in Somerset, 'though it could be any market town...
Chasetown is an area of Burntwood in Staffordshire. Originally a coal mining village, the pits are long-gone. This photograph, taken in the early 1900s, is interesting as the bus is owned and operated by a railway company, the London and North Western Railway (LNWR)....
"Not the most interesting photograph" I hear you say. I would agree but it's worthy of a place in our gallery because of the uniqueness of this shop in Grasmere. It is selling just one product .... gingerbread. The business was started in 1854 by Sarah Nelson to serve...
We have many lifeboat photographs in our archive. This one shows the Great Yarmouth crew around 1910. There were two lifeboat stations on the coast here, the other being at Gorlestone on the other side of the River Yare. They combined in 1926. We love the clarity of...
There is something very satisfying about a symmetrical image, whether composed deliberately or not. This one of the Clifton steps in St. Peter Port, Guernsey, is a far cry from the tourists' delight that the island is today. The steps are still there, of course, but...
Pudsey is a real place, not just the name of a bear on the BBC. I like this photograph because although it's one hundred years' old, the play equipment is so familiar. Parks, of course, were the 'lungs of the city', public spaces where people could escape from the...
What a wonderful photograph, taken in the early 1900s, of yachts racing on the Norfolk Broads. At this level, it was, and still is, a rich man's sport but sailing, even in the smallest dinghy, is truly exhilarating. It's interesting that despite the motion of the...
These Royal Navy sailors are on HMS Excellent but it's not a ship. In the early 1800s, a gunnery training school was established on board HMS Excellent moored near Portsmouth. The Navy then purchased nearby Whaley Island and, in the 1890s, moved the facility ashore....
Wyke is an area to the east of Halifax in Yorkshire. This photograph from the 1890s shows the practice of 'coal getting' in Judy Wood nearby. 'Getting' involved sorting through the waste from coal mines for the tiniest scraps of coal that remained after the pit had...
This unusual view of the Forth Bridge near Edinburgh was taken in the 1930s and shows a gang of maintenance workers walking to work, far above the Firth of Forth. It reminds me of the famous photograph of skyscraper construction workers in New York, eating their...
Disused railway stations are normally demolished but not this one. We see it here in the early 1900s at Foulridge near Colne in Lancashire. Following the closure of the line, the building was moved, stone by stone, to a new home at Ingrow West on the Keighley and...
King Edward VII is seen here seated in the rear of the boat being taken to his yacht. The event is Cowes Week, an annual gathering of society's elite, on the Isle of Wight, for yachting competitions. British royalty was always in attendance and the Keiser (also...
Crewe in Cheshire has always been know as a railway town. It was built on a greenfield site in the 1840s specifically to serve the burgeoning railway industry. Located at a major junction, it developed a range of construction, maintenance and administrative services...
Corby is a town in Northamptonshire which, unusually, has a fair every twenty years. This photograph of the fun of the fair (not many smiles here though) was taken in the early 1900s. The fair's various traditions are lost in the mists of time and it's not even known...
Clovelly is a picturesque fishing village on the north Devon coast. Interestingly, the whole village is privately owned, development is strictly controlled, no cars are allowed and residents have to carry everything they need from the car park at the top of the hill....
We Brits enjoy an excursion when on holiday, usually a coach trip to local places of interest. It was no different for Victorians, although the vast majority could only afford to be part of the mass migration to hotspot seaside resorts such as Blackpool. These...
This is Clitheroe Railway Station in Lancashire. The town is in the glorious Ribble Valley and the station is still in use. Photographs of railway stations taken in the 1890s usually show ranks of horse-cabs waiting for the next train to disgorge its passengers but...
Travelling fairs seem to be less common than they were in my childhood, when one would visit our town a couple of times a year. There was an excitement about the fair tinged with wariness and unease, not just about whether the rides were safe but the people operating...
Brodsworth Colliery, located near Doncaster, was a major coal mine employing, by the 1980s, thousands of men. The first shaft was dug in 1905 and this photograph was probably taken just a few years later. Given that our pits our now long gone and their spoil heaps...
This cotton mill could be anywhere in the north west of England but was, in fact, in Burnley. What can't be seen on the photograph is the noise. We have a museum near us which occasionally fires up just a few looms in a room that would have held hundreds and they are...
Prior to the First World War, most jobs were for men while women stayed at home doing domestic chores and bringing up children. It was a very unequal society with men having all the power and, yes, I can hear some of you saying "they still do". Women weren't even...
The original caption on this photograph is 'Bleriot plane, Filey'. Bleriot was an early pioneering aviator, famous for his designs and flying expertise but we don't think this is him. What was this pilot doing at Filey on Yorkshire's east coast and who was he? We...
There has been a lifeboat based in Bridlington, on the Yorkshire coast, since 1805. The earliest lifeboats were simply rowing boats and must have required a huge effort to row to the scene of a disaster. This one is much later, probably the 1880s, and is sail-powered...
It's strange how perceptions change. There had been a windmill on the seafront at Lytham St. Annes since the 1830s but when the town was being gentrified in the 1860s, the new residents objected to this industrial eyesore spoiling their view. Later, the mill suffered...
The Boston Stump, seen here in the background, is a well-known landmark in Lincolnshire. The county has a very flat landscape, so the tower can be seen for many miles. 'Stump' is a nickname, it is actually the tower of the Parish Church, St. Botolph's. The paddle...
The Ffestiniog Railway is a world-famous attraction in North Wales. It has operated since the 1830s as a means of transporting slate from the quarries in Blaenau Ffestiniog down to the sea at Port Madog for onward transportation by ship. At first, it was illegal to...
Durham is a lovely city to visit at any time of year and this Victorian photograph is particularly atmospheric with the Cathedral looming through the early morning mist. However, if you look closer, you'll notice that the romantic mist is, in fact, smoke from chimneys...
This photograph was taken in Duntocher, a village to the north west of Glasgow. It's well over one hundred years old but this delightful family scene could have been taken yesterday (although the clothes would be somewhat different), with a child playing in the water...
This is the Tay Bridge linking Dundee to Fife. In 1879, disaster struck when the bridge collapsed in very high winds and a train carrying some sixty passengers plunged into the river, all of whom died. The design of the Forth Bridge was influenced by the disaster and...
In October 1909, an aviation meeting was held at Doncaster Racecourse. These were the early days of flying, the machines were primitive and their designers and engineers (often wealthy amateurs) learnt and adapted through trial and error. Such meetings were an...
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