Picturing England Gallery

Crowsteps OP00758

Crowsteps, Tydehams, Newbury, Berkshire, c 1930. Herbert Felton (c 1887-??1968), silver gelatin DOP (developing out paper) print. Designed by Thomass Tait of Sir John Burnet, Tait & Lorne, and built in 1929, Crowsteps is one of the earliest Modernist houses in England. It was clearly inspired by the German architect Peter Behrena??s New Ways in Northampton which was built between 1925 and 1926, and Tait was commissioned on the strength of his workersa?? housing for Crittalla??s at Silver End in Essex built between 1927 and 1928. Herbert Felton, whose professional reputation owed much to his photography of Modernist architecture, has used a low point of view to take advantage of the reflective qualities of the garden pool to double the mass of the house and fill the portrait-orientated negative. Felton'??s ability as an architectural photographer was such that he became the first professional photographer to be employed by the National Buildings Record in 1941

© Historic England

Holiday Home at Shoreham AL2397_012_01

Converted railway carriage holiday home, possibly at Shoreham-by-Sea, West Sussex. Silver gelatin DOP (developing out paper) print by an unknown photographer, 1920s. Holidaymakers pose on the verandah of their converted railway carriage holiday home. Between the wars, the freedom offered by the motor car and ambiguous planning regulations stimulated the creation of plotland developments in remote or undeveloped stretches of coastline and countryside. Shoreham Beach in West Sussex was one such development, and these photographs may have been taken there. Railway carriages, cheap to build shacks and bungalows were built or converted to be both holiday homes and more permanent dwellings. Plotland developments principally catered for the urban working class, but they also attracted artistic and bohemian folk, eager to find places free from conventional restrictions where open skies and dramatic changes in the weather could stimulate artistic creativity

© Historic England Archive

Pulls Ferry, Norwich SED01_01_01

Pull'??s Ferry, Norwich, Norfolk, 1854. William Russell Sedgfield (1826-??1902), albumen print. William Russell Sedgfield included this image, produced using the waxed paper process, among his entries at the 1855 Photographic Institution exhibition in London. The 15th-century water gate adjacent to Pull'??s Ferry protected the channel that had been dug to carry building materials from the River Wensum to the site of Norwich Cathedral. Even at the age of 16, Sedgfield was keen to use Fox Talbot'??s new calotype process, and, after training as an engraver, he turned to photography in the early 1850s, adopting the waxed paper, wet collodion and dry collodion processes. He became ??one of the most critically acclaimed photographers of his generation?? and his photographs illustrated a number of books published during his lifetime, including Ruined Abbeys and Castles of Great Britain by William and Mary Howitt, which also featured work by Francis Bedford and Roger Fenton

© Historic England