RootsChat.Com
General => The Common Room => Topic started by: oldtimer on Tuesday 26 September 17 12:36 BST (UK)
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Hi friends :D
Just had to share this wonderful photo collection http://mashable.com/2017/09/24/william-grundy-english-views/#k_Sgb9lGK6qf
Hope you enjoy looking at them as much as I did.
Judy :D
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Judy,
They are fantastic photos,thanks for sharing. It's like a window into the past. Most of the people look as if their clothes had to last many a year.
I do like the"dandy" leaning against the brick wall.
Andrew
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Thanks Andrew.
I particularly liked the fact that these are mainly working class folk in their normal working attire. A real snapshot of rural live in the mid nineteenth century.
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Thanks for sharing those.
A wonderful window to the past :D
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Thank you so much for drawing attention to this marvellous collection of photographs. I think he lived at Sutton Coldfield. Perhaps he drew his subjects from this area, Sutton Park in particular. Evidently he spent a lot of time in composing the scenes. They are as good as, if not better than those of William Fox-Talbot who lived quite near me (Laycock Abbey).
The every day dress of ordinary people is a delight to see. Not Sunday best but full of style. After 1860 it was all downhill for all classes. The military band was Royal Artillery I think. Note the musical instruments, quite different to what followed.
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Thank you both.
Usually the photos we see from this date are indoor studio photos of people looking stiff and unsmiling, wearing their Sunday best. These are much more relaxed and informal.
Interesting that he lived in Sutton Coldfield - not too far from me!
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What a wonderful collection of photos. Thank you Judy so much. How did you come acroos them?
It would be quite a challenge to pinpoint some of the locations but in some caes, where there are buildings, surely possible.
My family were engaged in farming north of Sutton Coldfield at the end of the nineteenth century.
I love the one with the young lad and the dogs.
Judy x
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The quality of those photos is amazing! I wonder what the people in them thought when they saw themselves for the first time. We take instant photos so much for granted now with phones that can take photos and videos.
Thank you for finding this link for us all.
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Wow - what great photos! I just about find it hard to believe that photos taken in 1857 could be so clear! Thanks for sharing!
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Excellent pictures. It would be great to know where they were taken though
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Superb photos of some "everyday folk"!
I particularly liked the family sitting on the doorstep with the little barefooted chap and little one in the crib :)
Thank you for sharing
Lancs-Lassie
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Amazing insight into everyday life & clothing. Some, as suggested & if not subject to copyright, may be good candidates for a 'Where am I' thread.
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. Evidently he spent a lot of time in composing the scenes.
Google "William Morris Grundy Turkish"
The photo titled "William's Well" fascinates me for many reasons
Kind Regards :)
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I was going to suggest that locals might like to have a walkabout Sutton Park. However, it's 2,400 acres and has altered a lot since 1857. What could be done is trying to find any buildings via Google that are still there. That's what I will do after posting this.
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Excellent pictures. It would be great to know where they were taken though
I think they were taken in Warwickshire & Staffordshire.
(If I remember correctly from another post a few years ago)
They were on the Getty website, but nice to see them again without the watermark. Great photos
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They certainly are stunning photos. Particularly so when you consider this was the early days of photography, and didn't people have to stand stock still in pose for a long time for the exposure?
The photographer possessed a good sense of composition, too.
Wonderful, thank you for sharing those!
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Alternative caption for "Cemetery Kids" - where oh where did me mam say great great grandfather was buried?....
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Thank you Judy for sharing these photos, a real 'snapshot' into what life was like in those days.
Pat
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Nice photos, but can't be from 1857, more likely turn of the century.
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They are lovely photos, although a little too "staged" to be completely natural, but very different from studio shots. :)
Definitely around 1857 Scrumper, as the photographer died in 1859. A little about him here
http://www.rootschat.com/links/01ksn/
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Super photos! Amazing! Thanks for the link! 👍👍👏👏
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They are lovely photos, although a little too "staged" to be completely natural
I agree, in fact I prefer studio photos of the period because they don't pretend to be natural.
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Wow these pictures beautiful and powerful!
There was no such thing as a snapshot, due to long exposure time needed for the glass plates so scenes are arranged and contrived to some extent but the period clothes, character in faces and the stunning backdrops make these a real treasure and so clear for their age.
William Grundy was born in Birmingham in 1806. I wish the location was known for each picture.
A milk maid and farmhand were photographed in Whitby, North Yorkshire.
I would be especially interested to know about any of his rural photos taken in Warwickshire, Leicestershire & Derbyshire?
Andy_T
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Wow - what great photos! I just about find it hard to believe that photos taken in 1857 could be so clear! Thanks for sharing!
I have a photo taken of one of my g.grandmothers aged about 12. She was born in 1847 so her photo probably taken in 1859 and it is very clear. I guess it depends how well the photos have been looked after.
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Sometimes the negative on the glass plate survives and a clear picture may still be possible.
Andy_T
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Thankyou.
Interesting to see the smocks still being worn.
I believe each county had its own design ,in the elaborate smocking used to draw the linen material in for the yoke.
It was the ag lab’s every day wear.
The first photograph shows I believe moleskin,which was not actually from moles’
skins but a soft but hard wearing material for workwear ,notably breeches.
We think of “ The rural idyll”, but it was anything but.
Only real advantage was working in good clean fresh air.
Thank you again.
Viktoria.
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Fabulous collection of a bygone era, and so well preserved. These make me want to colour them ;D ;D
Thanks for sharing Judy.
Carol
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Hi Carol,
Thanks. They would look super coloured, being of such good quality.
I had forgotten about this post - it is well over a year old! Good to see that there is still some interest in these beautiful photos!
Judy
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I'm pleased that it was raised as I hadn't seen it the first time round :D
Carol
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Lovely!! One thing that struck me was that nearly everyone, including the children, is wearing a hat of some description.
Thank you.
Melbell
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What superb photographs. Although the original post is over a year old this is the first time I've come across them. Thank you very much for posting them, especially as he is a fellow "Brummie".
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I have just seen these photos, missed them when first posted. These are fantastic Judy especially interesting for me because my family were all farming and living the rural life at this time
Pat.
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What fabulous photos! I too somehow managed to miss them when they first appeared, so glad to have viewed them now.
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Fascinating photos.
When we lived on a farm the stockmen wore what they called smocks. They were in fact similar to those worn by warehousemen, laboratory technicians, grocers etc.
It was a sand sort of colour for ordinary work and white for taking the cattle to shows.
I thought it interesting that the name smock had stuck.
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I think you may be talking about the long linen/cotton coats that buttoned together down the front, when I worked on the Bull Ring market in Birmingham they were known as cow gowns. Again a rural or farm connection.
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Sorry Katharine but what you describe are Shop coats.
My Dad wore them when he served in our shop.
He wore the beige/fawn ones.
Shops selling food like groceries ,bread etc wore white ones as did Dentists .They were buttoned up the front .Made from cotton twill.
Those in the photographs are very different.Made from unbleached linen
they were very full and that fullness was taken in at the yoke by smocking hence the name smock.
They had large collars and full sleeves.
Each county had its own smocking patterns,a way of sewing which securely
caught and gathered the fullness.
Smocks like those in the photographs were not worn much after about 1920’s I should think.
You see them in museums dedicated to Rural Life.
Perhaps the description of country folk” Yokels” comes from those smocks,
Viktoria
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Yes Greenvale they are the ones.
Viktoria, sorry if I didn't make clear what I was saying.
I know what the coats were, what I meant was that my husband and his colleagues who were all stockman with pedigree cattle, called their coats "smocks." Brown smocks and white smocks. This was in Gloucestershire.
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Oh Katharine,I read your post quickly and as I often do,jumped in ,when I ought to have read it again.
I understand your point,the name sticking after so long.
I apologise to you.
Viktoria.
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Oh bless you Viktoria, That's fine.
I thought you might have misread what I wrote.
I think we all read too quickly sometimes. I am always telling my grandchildren to make sure they read questions carefully in exams as I know I often didn't and I then made careless mistakes.
Katharine :)
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Hi friends :D
Just had to share this wonderful photo collection http://mashable.com/2017/09/24/william-grundy-english-views/#k_Sgb9lGK6qf
Hope you enjoy looking at them as much as I did.
Judy :D
Wow, thankyou! Photos from the 1850s, and even the 1860s are so rare, it's so strange when you do see them as it's a world usually only depicted in engravings or in the caricatured world of Cruikshank or Phiz. I presume they had to be posed simply because any movement with the cameras of that day would result in blur.