Picturing England Gallery

Crowsteps, Newbury

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 workers 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

St Georges Hall OP02751

St George's Hall, St George's Plateau, Liverpool, 1854-?55. Attributed to Thomas Sutton (1819-75), salted paper print. Cabs stand outside the newly built neoclassical St George's Hall, designed by Harvey Lonsdale Elmes and completed by Charles Robert Cockerell. The building, combining a public hall and law courts, was erected between 1841 and 1856. The photograph is attributed to Thomas Sutton because the original mount bears the name of the Frenchman Louis-Desire Blanquart-Evrard, who published some of Sutton's negatives in 1854. Sutton and Blanquart-Evrard opened a printing establishment on Jersey in 1855, and launched the journal Photographic Notes the following year. Sutton was a prolific writer on photography, and published A Dictionary of Photography in 1858

© Historic England

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