“…OVER FIFTY YEARS AGO…” by Volunteer Alan Clarke

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Salisbury, volunteer, Wiltshire

When you walk along Silver Street from Barclays Bank to the Poultry Cross, if you look carefully, you will see that the pavement has been widened.  This happened over 50 years ago as evidenced by this photograph.  I doubt if it is an easy task without photographs such as this to determine when this pedestrian enhancement occurred.   The buildings in this 1965 scene look much the same now as they did then but they almost all had different tenants.

It is thanks to the amazing foresight and gymnastic abilities of the photographer, Austin Underwood, that we have this photograph.  Somehow he must have managed to gain access to the upper stories of the Barclay bank building to take this photograph.  Maybe someone could manage a repeat and obtain a “now” photograph from the same vantage point and check my following comments.  The first shop, visible on the left, is Hepworth’s the tailors where I bought my first suit, paid for by working nights at Welworthy’s piston ring factory in Harnham.  The premises is now (2017) occupied by the coffee shop, Nero.

Robinson Rentals, now also Cafe Nero, is next door .   In 1965 many families rented their TV.  Now we rent our mobile phones but choose a different word than ‘rent’.  One can make out Bollom the dry cleaners.  Then there is FHW (Freeman Hardy and Willis) the shoe people who moved round the corner to Minster Steet, and have now left Salisbury all together.  ‘Toni and Guy’ are now here.  On the other side of Silver Street, one can see that Marks and Spencers occupied the building that Boots the Chemist now (2017) have.    Woolworth’s had a large foodmarket on this side as well as their premises in High Street. Robert Stokes remains in name only along New Canal, the other side of their premises here in Silver Street.  Lipton, the self service grocers, eventually moved into Butcher’s Row before disappearing into the annals of history.  Now the premises is occupied by Santander.  Timothy Whites (Chemist) can be made out, squeezed between M&S and Robert Stokes.  They were taken over by Boots shortly after this photograph was taken. Curry’s sign can be seen down Butcher’s Row.  They moved out of town a few years ago to the Southampton Road with many other retailers.

Besides the architecture and the shops, there is much more of Salisbury’s social history in this image.  For example, double decker buses used to have a driver and a conductor.  Look carefully in this photograph to see the driver.   Butcher’s row appears to be pedestrianised.  One can just make out the “No Entry” sign but note the van parked pointing in the wrong direction.  Over eight premises have their blinds stretched out over the pavement.  How many shops now have a working blind?

One can observe lots of shopping bags but no shopping trolleys or mobility vehicles.

Only the men appear to be wearing the trousers back in 1965!

 

WITCHES AND ALCHEMISTS, SNAKES AND SWALLOWS by Volunteer Alan Crooks

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Archaeology, Stonehenge, volunteer, Volunteers, Wessex, Wiltshire

To my shame, this was my first visit to Avebury since 1983, when I attended a Royal Society of Chemistry Mid-Southern Counties Local Section Summer Excursion to Avebury, Silbury Hill, and the West Kennet Long Barrow.  I attended the SALOG visit as part of a self-imposed mission to visit all the sites depicted in the current exhibition, ‘British Art: Ancient Landscapes’. To this end, following a week’s holiday in Seaton last week, I made a detour to visit the Cerne Abbas Giant (and the village of Cerne Abbas itself) on my way home. Then, following the SALOG visit to Avebury, being such a lovely day, and following lunch at the on-site café, I embarked on the two mile walk along a bridleway to visit West Kennet Long Barrow, taking in Silbury Hill en route. At West Kennet Long Barrow, I was entranced to watch a swallow feeding her brood of chicks which were on a ledge in one of the burial chambers.

At Avebury, it was a delight to have the opportunity to chat with fellow volunteers from the other organisations involved. (I had a fruitful conversation about witches and alchemists, concerning some research I’m doing on a matter unrelated to Ancient Landscapes).

I was interested to hear from our Guide about the two types of stone, ‘pillar’ stones and ‘diamond’ stones, which represent male and female, and these face each other in the Avenue as sexual pairs.

The Guide for my party told us that the heaviest stone weighs an estimated 100 tons. On its outfacing side, she pointed out the head and neck of a ‘dragon’ – a result of natural erosion. (One of my fellow Volunteers pointed out that this is the same stone on which, in the exhibition, the artist has shown the face of William Morris, and indicated that this is to the left hand side of the dragon).

To me, the ‘dragon’ looked more like a snake, and this led me to put two and two together to perhaps make five, in wondering whether this is what inspired William Stukeley to depict Avebury as a serpent whose head rested at the Sanctuary on Overton Hill and whose body was formed by West Kennet and Beckhampton.

Avenues:

This was a very interesting, enjoyable and worthwhile visit. Many thanks to all concerned with its conception and organisation.

Alan Crooks (Engagement Volunteer)

The Choirboys

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Salisbury, volunteer

Many thanks to Volunteer Stephen Lycett who saw an article in the Volunteer Newsletter and sent us this:

Stephen writes: I wish I’d known in advance about  the Walter Alcock/Stirling locomotive article as I have a photo of Sir Walter and a group of choirboys actually playing with it.

“..JUST ONE OF THE MANY SKILLS…” by Volunteer Alan Clarke

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Museum, Salisbury, Salisbury Cathedral, volunteer, Volunteering

Scanning Negatives

What follows here is an illustration of just one of the many skills taught to Salisbury Museum volunteer scanners.  To obtain perfect digital images from the museum’s vast collection of negatives, there are a number of such skills to be learnt.

Preventing Curling

A flatbed scanner which scans negatives usually comes with a number of plastic templates for the various sized negatives.  These templates attempt to keep the negative aligned to the vertical and flat, as well as allowing automated scanning of multiple negatives placed on the flatbed.  The scanner hardware/software senses which template is in use by first scanning some plastic codes at the top of the template.  Thus, if you are not using any of these templates, one must not have anything in the first ½ inch of the scanning flatbed, otherwise the scanner gets confused.  It is far quicker, easier and more productive, not to use the plastic templates, but read on.

Software such as Vuescan can easily correct any misalignment of the negatives from up to 5 degrees away from the vertical, more than adequate.  Any negative placed on the scanner flatbed must therefore be at least ½ inch away from the top edge of the flatbed where the scanning illumination starts.  The first image here of Salisbury Cathedral, with the top of the tower covered in scaffolding, was produced by placing the negative by itself on the flatbed.  It looks as though the Cathedral is bending in the wind.  I can assure you that this was not the case.

 

The heat from the scanning head has curled the negative whilst scanning it.  The remedy is to have a piece of toughened glass, made with ground edges, and the correct size to fit the flatbed, minus the top ½ inch.  Salisbury Glass specially made this for the Museum.  Now one can put the negative on the scanner flatbed, position the negative and then place this sheet of glass on top, being very careful in letting the glass descend the final ¼ inch not to disturb the position of the negative.  A technique that also had to be taught. The negative is now constrained to remain absolutely flat whilst being scanned.  The second image here now shows the Cathedral without distortion, as the negative has not curled.

I thought that this was a nice example to illustrate one of the skills acquired by being a Salisbury Museum volunteer scanner.

Best wishes, Alan

THE IMPORTANCE OF RECORDING INFORMATION by Volunteer Alan Clarke

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Museum, volunteer

A few years ago, the museum’s photographic archive was dispersed and not easy to access.  Various handwritten reference books and card sets existed in numerous places.

Today a comprehensive structure exists which makes great use of the computer.  There are dedicated image rooms for storing the image archive items in numbered boxes.  All the photographs, negatives (film, slides, glass plates), postcards have been numbered and scanned.  Well not quite all. As you know, the museum has recently acquired a rather massive amount of negatives and slides. The scans are put onto the computer and hence can now be interrogated without having to spend years searching through boxes.

The file format called jpeg is used for all the images.  I use the word ‘images’ rather than photographs because it is not just photographs.  For example all the postcards are scanned, both front and back, as well as slides and even books of photographs.  Thus the jpeg image can include more than just the photograph.

A simple example is given here where the image numbered pp13408a is shown.

pp13408b, not shown here, is its reverse side, sometimes useful for hand written descriptions.  One can instantly see that it is called Harvesting at Waterson*, photo by A H Evans. Dorchester.  I can find the photographer on Google but no place called Waterson.  Maybe it is Waterson’s farm?  The typed note gives some fascinating information but unfortunately no references.  We cannot find any instance of the mentioned record of the men and oxen names in the museum.  This is why we now include such information in the metadata of the jpeg file where it cannot go astray.  Lots of potential research here: how widespread was the horse influenza outbreak? Did this spur the invention of the steam plough? How many oxen were imported? Has Lord Ilchester’s estate got records of this ‘oxen to replace horses’ event in 1885?

*Likely to be Waterston, Puddletown. The manor there was owned by Lord Ilchester until 1911.

AN ON-GOING STORY from Volunteer Alan Crooks

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volunteer

I am indebted to another of our Volunteers, Tony Harris, who, knowing of my interest in the wagon depicted in Constable’s ‘Salisbury Cathedral from the Meadows’, loaned me a small book entitled ‘Wagons and Carts’ by David Viner (Shire Publications, 2008).

David Viner is a museum and heritage consultant and a freelance curator, with a long-standing interest in carts and wagons.

The first thing I should say is that I am grateful to note that I fortuitously got the terminology right in my previous two blogs, for a cart has two wheels and a wagon has four.  A second issue concerns spelling – is it waggon or wagon? My dictionary shows that either spelling is permissible. Viner says that the former seems the older word, and seems also to be associated more with the use of road vehicles rather than those used in agriculture. However, this terminology is not consistent and differs according to location, as do variations in the design of wagons themselves.

Viner identifies two basic types of wagon, the box wagon and the bow wagon. The box wagon, as its name suggests, is little more than a box sitting on an undercarriage or frame, whereas the bow wagon is of a more elaborate design. Viner says that box wagons, although showing marked regional variations, were common across the whole of central, southern and south-western Britain from at least the Eighteenth Century onwards. Bow wagons, on the other hand, were much associated with the South Midlands, and also featured strongly in the south-western counties and South Wales.

Bow wagons are elegant constructions in which longitudinal timbers attached to the sides of the wagon, called ‘raves’ rise in a “gentle arch” over the rear wheels.  In fact, there are four types of rave, from bottom to top known as the inner rave,  middle rave (or mid-rail), the top rave and the outrave. The outrave, or outer rail, is angled outwards from the side of the cart to facilitate carriage of a greater load. In the bow wagon, the inner and outer raves rise in an arch over the rear wheels.

It is apparent from this description that the type of wagon depicted in ‘Salisbury Cathedral from the Meadows’ is a bow wagon. However, far from ‘rising in a gentle sweep over the wheels’, the curve is much more exaggerated, reinforcing my belief that Constable employed artistic licence in the portrayal of this vehicle.

Viner also says that a further group identifiable within the bow wagons classification are known as ‘ship’ or ‘cock-rave’ wagons, due to the rising up of the body over the rear wheels, evocative of the shape of a ship or of a cockerel’s tail. Thus, instead of turning downwards towards the shutlock (the end cross member of a wagon or cart), the hoop rave remains in a horizontal plain behind the wheel.

The illustration below is a Devon ‘ship wagon’ or cockrave, so-called because of the way the raves ride over the wheels.

Another example is this 1911 horse-drawn Somerset ‘cockrave’ wagon:

It is apparent that the wagon depicted by Constable in ‘Salisbury Cathedral from the Meadows’ is of this type, namely a cockrave wagon.

Footnote

 In writing this piece, I came across Amy Concannon’s article, ‘The Painting’, in Amy Concannon (ed), In Focus: Salisbury Cathedral from the Meadows exhibited by John Constable, Tate Research Publication, 2017: http://www.tate.org.uk/research/publications/in-focus/salisbury-cathedral-constable/the-painting (accessed 2nd May, 2017) in which she states, “… the cart (sic) is reminiscent of that in The Hay Wain,  modified here to display the characteristics of a particular kind of vehicle, the bow wagon, specific to the south-west of England”.

In writing this, Concannon made reference to:  Constable, exhibition catalogue, Leslie Parris and Ian Fleming-Williams, Tate Gallery, London 1991, p.364.

Amongst other things I am learning what beautiful things these wagons were… Thank you Alan.

AND IS IT STILL THERE?!

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volunteer

More joy from our photographic archive, courtesy of Volunteer Alan Clarke…

Heath Robinson Garden Waterer Contraption

The above photograph comes from the Austin Underwood collection.  The only text on the envelope, which contains a series of 2¼ inch black and white negatives, is “April 1965 Nether Wallop”.  The Wallop Brook flows through this village. There has been a mill at Nether Wallop for over a thousand years, as one is listed in the Domesday Book.  Thus, I deduce that the residents of Nether Wallop are well acquainted with water wheel technology.

This photograph of a water wheel rewards detailed examination.  I use the term Heath Robinson to describe its construction. I define a “Heath Robinson contraption” as a machine built using ingenuity and whatever is to hand, often string and tape, or unlikely cannibalisations. Apparently the term is linked to Second World War Britain’s shortages and the need to “make do and mend”.  This photograph shows a motorcycle wheel in the centre with eight long rectangular blades attached.  There have to be enough blades so that one blade is always in the water, otherwise the wheel will stop, as with no blade in the water there is no force to keep the wheel turning.  Eight is about the minimum number of blades necessary.

Now for the interesting bit: the diameter of the wheel.   The purpose of the wheel is to provide a head of water of about five feet.  This is done by having small tin cans pivoted near the ends of each blade.  These are filled as the cans are dragged through the water. The cans are then rotated up to the top where a hot water bottle is used to gently rotate the can and empty it into a container, which then allows the water to flow away through an almost horizontal drainpipe, going out of the photo to the right.  It is quite ingenious to use a soft hot water bottle to avoid a continuous clanking noise.  Austin has cleverly taken the photograph when a can is being emptied, so one can see the water flowing out of the can.  This also shows the direction the waterwheel is rotating, counter-clockwise looking into the photograph.  I can’t claim to understand all of this ingenious construction.  The hot water  bottle appears to be attached to a vertical pole which can be raised or lowered a very fine amount via a horizontal lever just above the river surface. Perhaps this was found necessary, as the force to turn a full can at the top might be enough to stop the wheel if the brook flow was weak.  By lowering the hot water bottle, the can would not be completely turned and thus require less force.  If the hot water bottle was lowered enough then the can wouldn’t be turned at all, and thus not be a brake on the wheel at all.  Hence maybe the need for fine adjustment depending upon the brook flow.

If any reader of this blog has access to a small brook, they now know how to make a garden watering contraption which requires no electricity.

FIRING SQUAD? Thought-provoking stuff from Volunteer Alan Clarke

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Salisbury, volunteer

Quite often, when scanning glass plates, one comes across a puzzle.  The thing to remember, with glass plates, is that it took the photographer some time to set up and expose his glass plate.  He (I haven’t found any ladies yet) would only have around a dozen emulsioned glass plates with him.  This meant that the photograph was intentional, not accidentaly taken or frivolously snapped.  Also there are seldom any written clues as to why the photograph was taken.

One of these puzzle images shows what I took to be part of one of the exterior walls of Salisbury Cathedral.  As you can see from the image here, there is not much to go on.  If you look carefully you can see some marks in the wall.  Now, you need to know some local history about Salisbury and the English Civil War.  Having been born and schooled in Salisbury, I knew the tales about musket shot marks in the Cathedral wall.   In recent times these musket ball marks have been attributed to target practice.

A friend of mine took the two following images, shown here, to add to the museum records.  All the previous images are black and white, so I thought you, the reader, would like some colour images for a change.  These two images do show the marks more clearly.  In fact some of the old black and white images had almost been discarded as nothing of interest, which would be true to the untrained eye or non-historian.

A retired ballistics expert friend thought the marks could be the result of a firing squad.

If you go to this site, you will find this extract:

http://erenow.com/common/execution-a-history-of-capital-punishment-in-britain/5.html

“Soldiers were being executed by gunfire in this country as early as the seventeenth century. A notorious case occurred following the siege of Colchester in 1648, during the English Civil War. The town was held by the Royalists, and the Parliamentarians, under General Fairfax, found it a long and arduous task to break through the fortified positions. Eventually, the defenders surrendered. Fairfax pardoned all the rank-and-file, but decided to make an example of the four Royalist commanders. Sir George Lisle, Sir Charles Lucas, Colonel Farr and Bernard Gascoigne were all sentenced to death at a drumhead court-martial. Gascoigne was reprieved because he was a foreign national, while Farr managed to escape. The other two men were shot by a firing squad in the grounds of Colchester Castle, on the evening of 28 August 1648. An obelisk now marks the spot where the so-called Royalist Martyrs met their death.”

This acts as a piece of supporting evidence that the musket ball marks at Salisbury Cathedral could be from a firing squad.  If you search the web you can find other evidence of firing squads used in the English Civil War where the prisoners were stood against a church wall.  As to the spread of the marks on the Cathedral wall, one needs information on the dispersion of shot from English civil war muskets, and lots more information, such as how many made up a firing squad, and what was the distance from the prisoner etc.  A fascinating piece of research starting from an almost discarded black and white glass negative.

Alan Clarke

WORTH A VISIT. News via Volunteer Bob Andrews

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News, volunteer

In 2010 a gallery space was created at Mottisfont Abbey near Romsey.  It made use of redundant rooms at the top of the house and it now has a growing reputation as an art venue in Hampshire.

The current exhibition of Rex Whistler’s work, entitled “More than just Murals” began on January 14^th. It draws on items from several different sources, the Welsh Guards Museum, Plas Newydd (NT) Anglesey, and his archive from the Salisbury museum.

It reflects various aspects of his short life, his school and student days, his varied output of murals, his work on the stage, book designs and advertising material. The exhibition is further enhanced by a beautifully crafted film, made by Daniel Whistler, Rex’s nephew.

Rex was influenced by the work of the architect Palladio. The Palladian bridge in the grounds of Wilton House appears in many of his classical landscapes, all created accurately from memory.

The exhibition closes on the 23^rd April

Bob Andrews     Collections Volunteer

HASTINGS? PERHAPS… by Volunteer Alan Clarke

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volunteer

Another gem from what is now a semi-regular series from Alan Clarke.  Long may it continue!

Hastings 1905 or 1907

When I find interesting old images I can’t recognise, I send them to my photographic detective friend Tony.

 

I sent him the seaside image you see here.

The original was discovered hidden away in the museum, and has now been scanned, referenced and enclosed in a numbered box in one of the museum’s image archive rooms.  This is Tony’s reply, slightly altered by me.

“I’m sure that you will be pleased to know that I have managed to identify the location of the seaside photo.  I started investigating soon after you sent it.

I assumed that it was taken in the UK as there is a union flag flying on the seafront.  I also guessed that it could be on the south coast so I looked for a Victorian resort, built on rapidly rising ground and, having a pier and an unusual hexagonal building.  I found that in some respects Hastings seemed to be a good match so I found an aerial view of Hastings on Google Earth and studied it.

The photo shows what could be a flagpole and what might be the end of a wall.  See annotation on photo.  From the Google Earth view of Hastings I found a flagpole in the castle and took the wall to be the castle wall.  Starting at the flagpole in the castle grounds, I drew a line on the Google aerial view which crossed the castle wall just before the wall ends.  Assuming it is Hastings and the flagpole position has not changed in 110 years, by this use of parallax, the camera was positioned somewhere along this line.

Both the photos and the Google aerial view show multi-storey houses with bay windows, and both also show a coast road which bends sharply as it approaches the west end of the picture.  So far so good.

What I wanted to find, as confirmation, was a photo of Hastings showing the distinctive hexagonal building and the pier.  I found pictures of piers at Hastings through the ages but none was of the design shown in the picture, and I could find no reference to the hexagonal building.

Additionally, the Google aerial picture shows a far larger distance between the sea and the base of the rock formation on which the castle stands.  Thus, if it was Hastings, at some time since the Victorian era, land has been reclaimed.  This would place the coast road shown in your photo further back from the current coast road shown in the Google aerial photo.

At this stage I felt there was insufficient evidence to say with certainty that Hastings was the true location.

Returning to the task a few days ago I looked at the lower right of the photo, which I had dismissed as containing nothing of interest, to see BRODERICKS SERIES.  This is embossed on the photograph where I have placed the green exclamation mark.  I discovered that Frederick Nutt Broderick 1878-1913 was a photographer based in the Isle of Wight.

AND

Frederick Nutt Broderick’s photographic business was established when picture postcards were being introduced into England.  In the 1900’s, Broderick travelled along the south coast taking photographs of seaside towns, later publishing them as picture postcards; including a number of postcards featuring views of Hastings in 1905 and 1907.  His eldest daughter Aurora acted as his assistant and, rather predictably, when he issued his postcards of Hastings, he published them as the Aurora series.  A photograph taken around 1910 showing a white bearded Broderick with his wife Emily and his two daughters, Aurora and Emmeline, appeared in a recent book on Hastings in old photographs.

These are the links to Mr Broderick:

http://www.childsweb.talktalk.net/studios/broderick.htm

http://rshg.org.uk/graves/mr-frederick-nutt-broderick-2/

I suspect that the photo could have been taken from a Hastings hotel in which Mr Broderick was staying.  It would have been a good vantage point and a hotel room with a bay window would have been a convenient place to set up a plate camera.”

Alan continues: On receiving this communciation from Tony, I went back through the museum’s archive of photographs and found three more images with Broderick embossed faintly on them;  Carisbroke Castle, Carisbroke Church and the Needles from Alum Bay, all three the Isle of Wight.  Thus, Hastings, as the fourth photo, doesn’t fit this set as it isn’t on the IoW.

The discrepancies of the hexagonal building, wrong pier structure and land reclamation worried me.  Could there be somewhere like this on the Isle of Wight?  Ventnor came to mind, so I queried Google as to whether Ventnor ever had a pier.   Yes it did!  I soon came up with the second image here, an almost perfect match.  So, it is Ventnor IoW, and not Hasting, after all.