All the Beaford Old Archive negatives have now been ‘scanned’ as digital RAW files. The time frame of this project suddenly moved quickly, as my workspace at the Devon Heritage Centre in Exeter was only available until the end of May. Therefore, it was important to make sure that all negatives had been copied as digital files before before this time. I strove to also rename these files so as to check them off against the database making sure they had all been been copied. This was a valuable exercise because I did find some negatives that I had missed. There were some negatives missing from folders which had already been noted as missing on the database. Interestingly, this also included two single negatives with descriptions ‘photograph of Beryl Yates’, one of Ravilious’s successors in making the original photographs for the Old Archive. I also found a few negatives that had been considered ‘lost’ by the database. I am hoping that the many additional negatives that I copied, which did not have a file names attached, will prove to be only misplaced and not lost after all.

Finding Lost Images

I had a good search around the Strong Room at the Devon Heritage Centre, where the negatives are housed, looking for any hidden places where Old Archive negatives may have been filed and forgotten about. I did indeed come across a folder of negatives that were clearly copies of old photographs, and these even had file numbers associated with them, but were higher numbers than the highest on the database. Some of them also had brief descriptions like place, many being Wolserey, so I made copies of these as well should it be decided to digitise them fully and add them to the database later. Interestingly, there was also a whole folder of James Ravilious original negatives which was labelled Events. These would never have been considered art or in keeping with the principles of the Beaford Archive. However, in time these may well prove to be a valuable archival record of Events, People, and costume etc for the future.

Photographic Gems

A lot of the digitising work can be methodical and mundane, but it is not without reward. Every so often I come across amazing images, insightful historical interest and photographic gems.

These gems include a set of pictures of the Stevenstone House estate workers, there is no date for the photograph are they are not attributed to any specific photographer but I hazard a guess that they were taken in the early 20th century prior to 1931 when the estate house was demolished. They are fine photographs taken by a photographer who was clearly experienced and creative, reminiscent of the photographs by Richard Avedon from the American West from the 1980s. I went to Stevenstone earlier this year to see what was left of the great Estate of the Rolle family. The grand house was totally demolished. There is a row of terraced houses, once a stable block, which are still lived in; but you have to try quite hard to imagine the scale of the estate which brought employment to the neighbouring village of Saint Giles and also to many in Torrington. I did find a number of wrought iron fences and gates often hidden in the undergrowth. I was particularly interested to see the many ‘kissing gates’ suggesting the ‘shanksies pony’ journey that workers made from the local villages. I include one of my pictures in the gallery. On my way back to the car, dwelling on what has been lost, I heard howls of the Stevenstone hounds on the breeze from a location hidden to me across the empty fields.

James Ravilious, when he was copying these old photographs, was clearly looking for examples that might add an insight into the history of his own profession. These next couple of images demonstrate that. Landkey Pill Farmyard with a group of people and photographer’s tripod (date unknown). Home of the Webber family. (It’s now burnt out and gone.) The large format camera is pointing away from the group of people and I assume that the photographer took the photo of their gear set up with a second camera. The other picture, also from Landkey, is of J Darch and a friend reading a paper. If you look at the close-up you’ll see the word PHOTOGRAPHY clearly printed.