Inland boating

Wherry, Norfolk AA98_09263

River Yare, Great Yarmouth, Norfolk. In much of East Anglia, waterways offered a ready means of transport for bulk goods, and the traditional working boat was called a wherry. Wherries were powered by sails, though here the wherry Albion is being towed from its berth by a motor launch on a voyage to Lowestoft. Photographed by Hallam Ashley.

Little Stoke Ferry CC72_01022

CHOLSEY, Oxfordshire. The low flat ferry boat awaits the corn wagons that used to cross the River Thames at this point. There is also a passenger ferry moored alongside to transport people between Cholsey and Littlestoke. In the distance is the huge Berkshire County Lunatic Asylum at Moulsford, built in 1870. It is now known as Fair Mile Hospital. Photographed in 1890 by Henry Taunt.

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.