Images Dated 2015 June

Dudley blast furnaces OP02658

Blast furnace, Russell'??s Hall, Dudley, West Midlands, 1859. Mr Mills, dilute albumen print. Mr Mills, otherwise unknown as a photographer, recorded the blast furnaces at Russell'??s Hall, west of Dudley, when the industry was producing a vast number of iron products, including nails, boilers, vices and chains. Coal mining around Dudley had been recorded in the early 13th century and the area was famous for the manufacture of iron nails in the early 16th century. By the late 18th century Dudley was at the centre of England'??s iron industry, and the region was dubbed the '??Black Country'?? because of the blackening of the landscape by the coal and iron industries. Russell'??s Hall itself was pockmarked by clay pits and coal shafts, and significant urban development only took place after the Second World War

© Historic England Archive

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

Pull's 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