This activity took place at every coal mine across Britain. The coal has been brought to the surface and is then examined and sorted, to remove unwanted debris and size it for different markets / purposes. Those who did this job were often miners who had had an...
Cycling was as popular in the late nineteenth century (when this photograph was taken) as it is now. This happy band of cyclists is the 'I.O.G.T.' in Doncaster. We've not been able to find out what the I.O.G.T. was .... or is. I assume its main purpose wasn't cycling,...
HMS Foudroyant, a British Royal Navy ship was, at one time, Admiral Nelson's flagship. She was launched in 1798 and retired from front line duties in 1812. Fifty years later, in 1862, she was converted into a Navy Training ship and was eventually sold into private...
North Shields, located on the banks of the River Tyne where it flows into the North Sea, has always been a busy fishing port. Early photographs of fishermen are often posed for the camera, partly because too much movement created a blurry image. This action shot...
This is Nechells in central Birmingham. The photographer captioned this photograph 'the last horse bus' and dated it 1906. By that time, horse buses in major towns and cities had been replaced by steam and electric trams and motor buses. Horses were still used for...
In Lancashire, factories producing textiles were known as mills. In the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, thousands of them existed to process wool and cotton and make finished products ranging from military uniforms to bed linen, dresses to curtains. Why...
Today, London's river police are highly-trained and well-equipped to respond to emergencies and undertake routine enforcement roles associated with a busy river. This photograph, probably taken in the 1880s, shows their Victorian counterparts. Their role was probably...
This striking portrait of a London fireman was taken in the late 1800s. The steam engine behind him was used to power the water pump that provided the jet of water. In the early days, firemen would only attempt to extinguish fires at houses that displayed a plaque on...
Goose Fair is one of the UK's largest and oldest fairs and has been held annually, in the Autumn, for more than eight-hundred years. Originally located in the Old Market Square in the centre of Nottingham, it started as a traditional, livestock-trading market and was...
Early photographs of railway stations are always interesting. This one in Skipton, Yorkshire, shows a scene typical of thousands of stations across Britain in the early 1900s. There are at least twelve station staff wearing smart uniforms. Many of them are porters,...
This extraordinary photograph was taken on 15th April, 1919, shortly after the end of the First World War. The crew had surrended a couple of months earlier and the boat was being towed through the English Channel when it came adrift and ran aground on Hastings Beach....
This photograph was taken on the Isle of Man in the early 1900s. Such scenes were repeated at fishing ports all over the UK. The boats have returned to harbour with their catch and having unloaded the fish, girls would gut them (remove the inedible bits) and pack them...
We use peat today as a fertiliser in our gardens but for centuries, in rural communities in Scotland and Ireland, peat was used as fuel for warmth and cooking. By its nature, it's full of moisture and heavy and digging it out of the ground was back-breaking work. It...
It's helpful when Victorian photographers caption their images. Most didn't, of course, but this one did, so we know that it is North Berwick golf course, on the coast to the east of Edinburgh. The date is probably the 1880s and, by then, the Club had already been...
In the early 1900s, many UK cities, towns and even villages had electric tram services. This one in Dundee, Scotland, shows the driver, an inspector and a very young conductor (ticket seller), all looking very proud of their, probably new, electric tram. Long before...
British seaside piers were originally built to enable steamers to call at resorts regardless of the tide and depth of water. However, they immediately became attractions themselves, be it for a stroll 'on' the sea or for the various pleasures they offered. Many have...
This Victorian photograph shows a young girl looking longingly at sweets in a shop window. It is deliberately-posed, rather than taken at random by the photographer. We know it's Winter as there is snow on the ground and there might be a clue to the location, as the...
This alley in Whitby has the unusual name of 'Tin Ghaut'. Ghauts, of which the town had several, seems to be a term used only in Whitby and possibly derives from 'gate'. Taken in the early 1900s, this is an interesting study of life in the back-streets of a Yorkshire...
This delightful photograph from the 1890s captures a touching moment between father and son. The boy, perhaps twelve years old, is already a seasoned fisherman and will grow up to follow in his father's footsteps. In the background, we can see Scarborough Castle on...
This photograph of the Brooklyn Bridge, which connects Manhattan and Brooklyn in New York City, was taken in the late 1890s. Construction began in 1870 and was completed in 1883. On the first day alone, almost 2,000 vehicles (horse-drawn, of course) and 150,000...
In Victorian times, when taking a photograph involved glass plates, chemicals and a dark room to develop your prints, night-time photography was challenging and required technical expertise, experience, special equipment, trial and error and luck to get that perfect...
One of the engineering wonders of the Victorian era, the Forth Bridge, near Edinburgh, crosses the Firth of Forth. Construction began in 1883 and the bridge was opened in 1890. Here, the main structure is almost complete, so the photograph was probably taken in 1888...
This is the cockle beach at Leigh-on-Sea in Essex but, far more importantly, it's a precious moment shared by a young girl and her grandfather, captured forever by a Victorian photographer. Enjoy this original photograph from our archive. It is low resolution and has...
St. Ives in Cornwall is known for its picturesque town and harbour, the Tate Gallery and even for hosting a G7 meeting of World leaders just around the corner in Carbis Bay. However, in Victorian times it was, quite simply, a fishing village. Here we see the...
This photograph of Brighton shows the Chain Pier in the distance which was destroyed by fire in 1896 and Volk's Electric Railway which still operates today. Enjoy this original photograph from our archive. It is low resolution and has a 'keasbury-gordon.com'...
We like the irony in this photograph. The location is Pontefract racecourse, one of the oldest horse racing venues in Europe. The chauffeurs have deposited their wealthy employers at the grandstand for a day of gambling, dining, drinking and networking. Meanwhile,...
This is the City Arcade in Birmingham. Built in 1898, it was originally much larger than it is today but part of it was destroyed in a WW2 air-raid and never rebuilt. There is an elegance to Victorian arcades that eludes their modern counterparts, our mega-malls. It's...
The first railway under the River Mersey between Liverpool and the Wirral was operated by steam trains. The smoke and dirt from the engines could not be adequately removed from the tunnels by ventilation, so passengers preferred to use the ferries. As a result, the...
The hotel business has always been competitive and owners still look for ways to make theirs more attractive than the next. In Victorian times, temperance hotels sprang up for those wanting an alcohol-free stay then, as cycling became a huge craze, some hotels offered...
This bridge across the River Clyde in Glasgow has had three names at various times in its history .... Glasgow Bridge, Broomielaw Bridge and Jamaica Bridge. This photograph, taken in the late Edwardian period, shows the reliance on horse-power at the time. It's...
These rock dwellings are in Mansfield, Nottinghamshire. Cut from sandstone, they were occupied for hundreds of years. Some had four rooms and large families lived in them. The last known occupant is thought to have left for a more conventional home in the early 1900s....
This interesting photograph was taken in July 1907. The gentleman on the cart with the white beard is William Booth, founder and leader of the Salvation Army and he was visiting Denby Dale in Yorkshire. For such a small and remote place, it must have been a very...
Throughout railway history, accidents were a relatively common occurrence, usually caused by human error. This photograph shows a more unusual one, as a viaduct has collapsed and the engine can be seen on its side on the embankment. The date was 2nd February 1916,...
Crofting has provided a subsistence living for the inhabitants of Scotland's islands for thousands of years. It involves farming a small piece of land to raise animals and grow crops, to provide enough food to stay alive. For most, there was nothing romantic about it...
Whitby, on the Yorkshire coast, with its fishing boats, bustling quayside and quaint back-alleys, has attracted artists for hundreds of years. In the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, photographers followed in their footsteps, the most famous being Frank...
Denby Dale, a village in Yorkshire, has a history of making huge pies (claimed by some to be the World's largest) to celebrate national and local events. The first was in 1788 and the latest in 1988, with just five other occasions in-between. In this unusual...
For Victorians, oysters were cheap street food, the equivalent of burgers today. At some point in time, they moved up a class or two and became a rare (and expensive) delicacy. Whitstable, on the north Kent coast, has long been famous for its oysters and, indeed, has...
There has been a ferry across the River Thames at Woolwich for centuries and there still is. Boats of all types were obvious subjects for early photographers and our archive contains many images of them, including some of the Woolwich ferry. However, we like this one,...
Madame Tussaud was born in 1761 and brought her travelling waxwork exhibition to Britain in 1802. It has been hugely popular ever since and is now a global business. You would never imagine that in a world dominated by moving and 3D imagery, static models of...
This is a very unusual view of the Crystal Palace. It was originally built in central London to house the Great Exhibition of 1851 but later moved to Sydenham, south of the the Thames. Virtually every photograph of the Palace shows it in its own grounds, thereby...
Trafalgar Square is so busy, all of the time, that we often don't see it for what it is, a magnificent, beautifully proportioned, people-space in a noisy, crowded, bustling city. Designed by John Nash and opened in 1844, it reflected Britain's wealth and our place in...
Today, tunnels such as those for the London Crossrail and HS2 railway line projects, are dug mechanically by huge machines but much of the London Underground system was excavated by hand, moving forward one inch at a time. This photograph from the Victorian period,...
It's Euston Station but not as we know it. Where are the crowds, the shops, the cafes? We like the composition of this photograph with its clean lines (no litter, sorry about the pun) and roof supports sweeping away into the distance, echoing the journeys made by the...
When this photograph was taken in the early 1900s, Castleford was an industrial town and these men's working lives would have involved hard, physical graft. Despite that, in their spare time, they were members of the local running club and here we see them about to...
Any large ship in dry dock for repairs is an impressive sight. RMS Aquitania was a Cunard Line ocean liner, launched in 1914 and scrapped in 1950. There are several people in this photograph but they're so small compared to the ship, that you'll need to look closely...
We're used to strolling or cycling along picturesque canal towpaths but that wasn't their original purpose and they are called that for a reason. In this romatic study of a canal barge, taken in the early 1900s, we see the horse in the distance, pulling the boat. What...
An interesting photograph, taken in the early 1900s, of Epsom Racecourse. The men taking bets (in cash, of course) had hand-written sign-boards showing the odds for each horse. There were no mobile phones, calculators or computers with complex algorithms, so making...
This photograph was probably taken in the 1930s and shows the proud drivers of the Shredded Wheat fleet. Perhaps these were new lorries and this was a publicity photo. Industrial photographs from this period are relatively rare and this one reminds us that some of our...
Haworth Parsonage in Yorkshire was the home of the Bronte sisters, whose books are as popular as ever. The parsonage, shown here, is now the Bronte Museum and thousands of Bronte enthusiasts from all over the world visit each year. If we stand in the same position...
Brayford Pool is a natural lake in the centre of Lincoln. It is connected to the River Trent by the Fosse Dyke and has been used as a commercial waterway for centuries. In this photograph, taken in the early 1900s, you can just make out the outline of the Cathedral in...
This photograph was taken in Levenshulme near Manchester, probably in the 1920s. Notice the BP petrol pump and the various oils for sale .... everything needed to ne oiled manually to keep the engine working and wheels turning. The breakdown truck with the crane on...
Glencoe, famous for the 1692 massacre of the MacDonald Clan, has some of Scotland's most dramatic scenery and driving or hiking through it today is a must-do experience. Imagine taking this excursion on a bright Summer's day, in the 1890s when this photograph was...
Wicksteed Park near Kettering has been a much-loved theme park for one hundred years. The narrow gauge railway, shown here, which takes visitors around the grounds, was built in 1931 and is still running today. This photograph was taken in the 1930s. Enjoy this...
Jersey, the largest of the Channel islands, had two separate railways running along its south coast from St. Helier, one to the east and another to the west. The first was opened in 1870 and the last train ran in 1936. Much of the track-bed still exists and provides a...
We are used to huge windmills scattered across the landscape producing electrical power. This one is a little older, with a different purpose. Located in Thorne, a market town near Doncaster, it would have been typical of its type, built by local craftsmen with...
Edinburgh has a smart fleet of quiet, comfortable, modern trams but these are just the latest incarnation of trams going back to the 1870s. They first appeared in 1871 and were horse-drawn. The horses were replaced in 1888 by an underground cable system which ran...
Peascod Street is one of the busiest in Windsor, with its mix of high street chain stores, cafes and speciality shops. The name derives from 'pes croft', as peas were a staple food in Medieval times. This 'action' shot was taken in the 1890s and shows a bustling scene...
This interesting photo of Tenby beach and St. Catherine's Island was probably taken in the 1890s. The wooden huts on wheels are bathing machines and were to be found at every popular seaside resort. Ladies would hire one, step inside and then be towed into the water...
This interesting photograph from the 1890s is of the Swing Bridge in Newcastle. Many of the landmarks haven't changed .... the High Level Bridge, the Castle, the Cathedral .... but the fashions certainly have. I wonder if it was compulsory to wear a flat cap? Enjoy...
The style of the trams shown here would suggest that the photograph was taken in the early 1900s. Trams changed travel habits forever. Their affordable fares and extensive networks enabled more people to go to more places, for more purposes, more often .... though not...
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