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 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

Consett Steel Works FF98_00247

Consett Steel Works, County Durham, 1945-80. Eric de Mare (1910-2002) cellulose acetate negative. Steel-making dominated Consett for 140 years from 1840, and the steelworks, employing 6, 000 workers in the 1960s, loomed over rows of terraced houses. Eric de Mare's elevated view of Consett Steel Works captures their gargantuan scale, echoing the work of pre-war photographers such as Albert Renger-Patzsch in Germany and Charles Sheeler in the United States who emphasised the strong forms of industrial structures. De Mare used colour photography here, recognising that this required a ?'different vision from black-and-white film. The massive tube in the foreground reflects his view that a close shot filling or almost filling? the frame will usually be more effective and more interesting

© 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