It is early summer sometime in the mid-1890s. The flowers are in bloom and the leaves are in their full glory on the trees. A young bride poses with her new husband on their wedding day. She is dressed in the fashion of the time – a dress with full leg-of-mutton sleeves with a long train at the back of the dress. She clutches her beautiful spray of fresh flowers, and poses with her wedding party for the camera-man, Stacey of Great Dunmow.
Stacey of Great Dunmow – late Victorian wedding party
One of the female guests lightly rests her hand on the seated older gentleman. Father and daughter? Sister of the bride or of the groom? Is the elderly gent the father of the bride or groom? The bride has two bridesmaids who are both wearing matching dresses and hats, and are holding sprays of flowers (the second bridesmaid’s bouquet is hidden behind the bride’s head). Who are they? Unmarried sisters of the bride and groom, or childhood friends? Who is the woman sitting next to the groom? Is she the mother of either the bride or groom – she’s not wearing a corsage. Or is a corsage for the mothers, a modern-day tradition?
So many questions. The main question being: whose wedding is this? It looked to have been a beautiful sumptuous wedding with all the wedding party in all their full splendor.
That well known internet auction site yielded up this picture but with no clue as to who these people were – apart from the signature of the photographer, Stacey of Great Dunmow. In the Victorian era, Stacey the photographer was also a nurseryman, so it is highly possible that it was his shop who made up the beautiful floral bouquets for the bride and her two bridesmaids, and made the beautiful buttonholes for the males of the wedding party. A beautiful summer’s event captured over a 100 years ago. Someone’s great-grandparents (or great-great?) consigned to the anonymity of the modern age’s internet. It always saddens me when I see these photos of families from long ago times. They had probably been kept by the bride and groom’s descendants for 100 years, but now thrown out with the rubbish in a house clearance. The picture is excellent condition so has been stored safely for over 100 years – but probably not put out on display because age has not marked the picture.
Here they are now out on display into the modern world of the 21st century. The Great Dunmow wedding party of summer sometime in the mid-1890s – captured forever by Stacey’s of Great Dunmow.
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I have written before on my blog about the aerial photography taken of the town and environments of Great Dunmow by a small aircraft flying high in the skies of East Anglia in 1928. During the same flight, the small airplane also flew over the tiny village of Little Dunmow and captured for posterity one of the area’s main employers, the factory of the Anglo Scottish Sugar Beet factory. This part of Essex and East Anglia has a long history of the refining of sugar beet and it is incredible to see an aerial photograph of a factory in it’s inter-war heyday.
Anglo-Scottish Sugar Beet Factory, Little Dunmow, 1928. This photo is from English Heritage’s Britain from Above project. Click the photo to be taken directly to a zoomable image of this photo from their website.
During a recent rummage around an antiques shop in Lavenham, Suffolk (a small beautiful town which also has a history of small sugar beet factories), I found the 1976 book Essex and Sugar by the local historian Frank Lewis. It is to him I turn to now regarding the Anglo-Scottish Sugar Beet Factory in Little Dunmow, Essex. In his book, Mr Lewis refers to the factory as being in Felsted, the neighbouring village to Little Dunmow. As the two villages are so near each other, the location of the factory changes in documents/books between Little Dunmow and Felsted. The factory also appears to have changed name over time and at points in its history was known as the “Anglo-Scottish Sugar Beet Factory” or the “British Sugar Corporation Sugar Beet Factory”.
Our main Essex interest in beet sugar lies now with the Felsted factory of the British Sugar Corporation. With Mr. and Mrs. Chartres, I spent a full and interesting day at the village, now for over three decades [i.e. by the time of the book’s publication in 1976] associated with sugar production, but famed more for its ancient school [Felsted School]. In the morning at Princes Farm Mr. Gordon Crawford showed us the “Forecaster” at work, the most advanced beet-harvesting machine, and far from the days of hand-digging of obstinate roots is the operation of this mechanical giant, also an advance on machine harvesters needing an accompanying lorry in which to deposit the uplifted beet. The Forecaster is an Essex development, and is constructed as a compact unit, carrying the extricated beets to a receiving space at the top of the machine, detaching earth or mud en route, at the same time slicing off the tops of the next row of beets preparatory to lifting. Only when full did the harvester go off to deposit its contents in a lorry, thus one man only was needed for the actual harvesting; in the early days, several laboured at an arduous and unpopular toil. The crops, destined for the nearby factory are grown from seed supplied by the buyers to ensure uniformity and quality. Mr. Crawford harvested his first sugar beet with a pair of horses in 1930, and he is a member of the family formerly of Suttons Farm, Hornchurch, the site of the R.A.F. Station.
The Forecaster in 1976
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During the day we had observed the lofty buildings of the British Sugar Corporation establishment with its plume of white smoke, and later its dominance in the scene when lit up at night. One writer has remarked that with a favouring wind the factory smell carries for miles around, and a former woman member of the office staff recalled her strongest memory was of the ‘sickly sweet smell you couldn’t get away from’, but though beet processing has its characteristic odour, as does a refinery, our party were not conscious of strong odours, either in or out of the buildings, though I questioned a girl on this point, knowing from experience how responsive young women are to sugar smells, pleasant or unpleasant. The warmth of the building was felt by her, not to a too trouble-some extent. On commencing this conducted tour, we were made aware of the fact that this was a factory in the country when we were informed that the visiting party in which we were included would be the last for a long period, as a precaution against the foot and mouth epidemic appearing in that region.
The factory tour showed the cleansed beets pass to machines slicing them into strips, a glimpse of the revolving drums in which the strips yielded their sweetness into water (diffusion), the resulting thin syrup of ‘juice’ charged with lime and carbonic acid gas which combined to form a precipitate trapping impurities in the juice (Carbonatation) the extraction by filtering of this precipitate, a second carbonatation and filtering, the juice treated with sulphur dioxide to a neutral reaction, the concentration of juice containing 15% sugar to syrup containing 65% sugar under vacuum in huge boilers or vessels called evaporators, another close filtering, no char, and the rest of the process as described in a refinery with vacuum pans, centrifugal machines, final drying.
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This huge Essex successor to the ventures of Marriage and Duncan treats annually over 300,000 tons of beets from 23,000 acres spread over Essex and surrounding counties from Cambridge to Kent, and each day can process 2,500 tons of beet to yield 350 tons of white sugar, 250 tons of dried pulp or pulp nuts for cattle food and 130 tons of molasses for industrial and other uses. (An acre of beet will yield from 38 to 40 cwt of sugar against 8 to 12 tons per acre from cane; and the sugar content of the beet is 15% to 16%, the cane about 13%.) The personal of 325 men and women operate the process continuously day and night for approximately 120 days, each season or campaign from about late September to the end of January; and this seasonal labour force is recruited from the surrounding locality and from Ireland. Delivery of beets to the factory is by road, though in the past some cargoes in sailing boats travelled from Walton to a suitable point for Felsted.
…
Mrs B. McArdle, who mentioned the ‘sickly smell’ has provided me with some other early memories of the Felsted factory where in her early 20s she was employed as a compotometer operator in the 1927 and 1928 campaigns. In those days no refining plant existed and she recalls the piles of brown sugar to be sent to Tate and Lyle. The small office had a canteen attached for the clerical and similar staff of 12; she can remember that wellington boots were worn for the necessary journeys to muddy and wet floors where the beet was washed and writes of having to work out prices for the farmers according to sugar content of beets, and allocating molasses on the amount of beet sent in. She lodged at a farm near the Flitch of Bacon [a pub still in existence today] in Little Dunmow, where only one shop existed, and without public transport the journey to and from the factory was a fair walk, unless a lucky car picked her up. Apparently there was little time for amusements as she worked ‘fairly late’, also Saturday and Sunday mornings when the beets were coming in; but a hard tennis court was outside the office, there were whist drives and dances in surrounding villages, a cinema at Braintree where you had to book your seat and the music was supplied by one tinny piano, and the manager sprung a party at his home for the staff. She was young and evidently found her situation not uncongenial, for both in her letters to me and to the Essex Countryside [a monthly local interest magazine] she writes of a ‘happy time of long ago’ and ‘pleasant memories of the happy time I spent at Felsted’.
Sugar-beet harvesting in 1948. Click on the image above to be taken to British Pathe’s website to see a short film of Felsted’s sugar-beet harvesting in 1948.
In February 1999, the Sugar Beet factory was demolished and now in its place is a large housing development. The estate was originally known as Oakwood Park, but in very recent years has now been renamed to Flitch Green – a throw-back to the days of the Dunmow Flitch, when it was originally held in Little Dunmow.
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Dunmow* is known throughout the world and history as being the English town where the curious but ancient custom of the Dunmow Flitch takes place. This ancient ceremony is when couples come into the town, and, in front of a judge and jury, try to persuade a court of law that for a year and a day they haven’t wished themselves unwed. If they win the court case, and persuade the judge and jury of their love for each other, then they win a ‘flitch of bacon’ (a large side of cured pig). The court is quasi-formal with a proper judge, jury and barristers. However, all is not as it seems as the legal proceedings are very light-hearted with one barrister defending the Pig, and the other for the couple. Any couple who wins the Flitch is said to be ‘bringing home the bacon’ and is carried aloft on the ancient Dunmow Flitch chair by the town’s ‘yeomans’ in a parade through the streets of Great Dunmow.
The last Dunmow Flitch – in 2012 –
carrying the flitch of bacon through the town
before the Flitch Trials
This ancient custom was mentioned in medieval literature by both Geoffrey Chaucer and William Langland towards the end of the 14th century. Chaucer’s Canterbury’s Tales – The Wife of Bath’s Tale states
The bacon was nat fet for hem, I trowe, That som men han in Essex at Dunmowe.
William Langland’s Piers Plowman states
Though they go to Dunmow, they never fetch the Flitch.
In the 20th century, the Dunmow Flitch – the side of cured bacon – was provided by the Dunmow Flitch Bacon Factory. This was a large factory and employer of many people within Great Dunmow and surrounding areas until its closure in the 1980s. Sometime in the 1920s or the 1930s, the owners of the Dunmow Flitch Bacon Factory commissioned Willett’s of Great Dunmow to take photos of the workforce in action at the factory and thus create a unique set of postcards of the Dunmow Flitch Bacon Factory. As one of my readers pointed out on my post about Great Dunmow’s Berbice House school – why were these postcards produced? Who were they aimed at? I cannot answer these questions, but I can show you the postcards of the Dunmow Flitch Bacon Factory and flitches of bacon produced in the factory.
Dunmow Flitch of Bacon Factory (Exterior)
Dunmow Bacon Factory – Pig Killing
Dunmow Bacon Factory – The Hanging Hall I. The child at the left of the picture looks to be about 12-14 years of age.
Dunmow Bacon Factory – Cleaving the pigs
Dunmow Bacon Factory – The Employees. Is the person 3rd from the left a woman?
Dunmow Bacon Factory – The Hanging Hall II
Dunmow Bacon Factory – The Manager and Irish Employees. It is interesting that the Irish Employees are in a photograph separate from the other employees.
These postcards are incredible pieces of 20th century social history showing us the employees and the inside of the factory. In addition to the inside of the factory, there are also in existence external photographs. In 1928, an aeroplane flying the skies of Essex and Suffolk took the photo below of Great Dunmow. The large building in the centre is Hasler’s Corn and Seed mill, and the low-lowing buildings to the right-edge of the photo is the Dunmow Flitch Bacon Factory.
Hasler and Company Corn and Seed Merchants, Great Dunmow. This photo is from English Heritage’s Britain from Above project. Click the photo to be taken directly to a zoomable image of this photo from their website.
Close-up of the Dunmow Flitch Bacon Factory from the air in 1928.
To the left of the factory are the railway sidings running to
the factory from Dunmow’s station.
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*I use the word “Dunmow” with great care, because the medieval Dunmow Flitch originated in the tiny village of Little Dunmow and its pre-Reformation priory. But in modern times – certainly since the Flitch’s revival in the nineteenth century – the ceremony has moved to the neighbouring larger town/village of Great Dunmow some three miles away from its original location. There are two Dunmows – Great and Little. In the Tudor records, Great Dunmow was called “Much(e) Dunmow” and Little Dunmow was called “Dunmow Parva”. During my research on Great Dunmow, I have read many many accounts about the medieval/Tudor Dunmow from many commentators and even from well-known historians who fail to realise that there are two Dunmows. It annoys me intensely when I read “facts” about Tudor Great Dunmow, but the events actually took place in Little Dunmow (and vice versa).
An artist’s impression of Dunmow Priory in 1820 (now part of Little Dunmow’s church) – the original home of the Dunmow Flitch.
Update February 2014:That well-known internet auction site currently has for sale the card “The Hanging Hall II”. On that card, there is a postmark: 1 July 1910. So my estimate (above) that these cards were from the 1920s is totally incorrect! The set dates must date from sometime around 1910.
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Not long after my post, I was looking through an on-line catalogue of an auction-house, and saw that a set of cards from Great Dunmow were coming up for auction. The image of the cards in the auction-house’s catalogue was extremely poor and none of the cards were clearly visible. But, they were too irresistible for me – I just had to bid on them! So I bid on them blind and, because there are many collectors of postcards from Great Dunmow, won them at great cost. Imagine my shock and surprise when they arrived in the post and I saw that one of the cards was of Great Dunmow’s Military Funeral but not the postcard I already had.
Arthur Willett, photographer of Great Dunmow, had taken at least two photographs of Private Gibson’s Military Funeral. This second card shows the funeral cortège with Gibson’s Union Jack covered coffin very clear in the photograph. Behind the carriage with the coffin, there is a group of people walking – including a hatted woman and some children. Is this Sarah Gibson, William’s wife, and their children? Behind this group, there is a large gun-carriage. Through the lens of Great Dunmow’s photographer, a tiny piece of First World War social history has been captured for posterity.
If anyone has anymore postcards of Great Dunmow’s military funeral, please do let me know – I would love to publish them on my blog. My recent auction purchase has given me some more great social-history postcards of this small East Anglian town through the lens of Arthur Willett – I’ll be publishing them on my blog over the next few months.
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They shall grow not old, as we that are left grow old Age shall not weary them, nor the years condemn. At the going down of the sun and in the morning, We will remember them.
Remember the men of this place who died for freedom and honour A.D. 1914-1918
Percy Charles Archer: died 15 July 1917
John Lewis Pasteur Armstrong: died 22 June 1916
Frederick Attridge: died 9 October 1916 Frank William Bacon: died 4 December 1918
Amos Alfred Barrick: died 31 December 1916
George Henry Barrick: died 11 June 1918
Frederick John Bartley: died 26 March 1917
George Henry Beard: died 7 September 1916
Albert Brand: died 8 October 1915
Frederick J Burchell: died unknown
Alfred Richard Burton: died 5 April 1917
Harold Vincent Burton: died 22 December 1916
Thomas F Burton: died 29 November 1918
Edwyn (Edwin) Bush: died 24 April 1917 David William Button: died 8 December 1918
William Henry Carter: died 24 July 1918
Alfred Thomas Caton: died 13 April 1918
Frederick Chapman: died 6 December 1918
Frederick George Clarke: died 30 July 1916
Alfred Coates: died 21 May 1918
Stanley Richard Coates: died 2 September 1918
George Cock: died 4 January 1918
William Coppin: died unknown
Sydney Cox: died 13 August 1918
Albert Crow: died 1 November 1914
William Frederick Crow: died 5 October 1917
Benjamin Thomas De Voil: died 1 July 1916
Ernest Cecil Freshwater: died 8 May 1915
Arthur Edwin Greenleaf: died 3 August 1916
George Frederick Gunn: died 18 July 1917
Arthur Gypps: died 16 October 1917
Harry Hines Halls: died 26 March 1917
Ernest Edward Harris: died 8 August 1918
Frank Harris: died 21 November 1916
Leonard Melsome Hasler: died 21 September 1917
Stanley Howland: died 21 October 1916
Thomas David Jarvis: died 16 July 1916 Gordon Parnall Kemp: died 26 September 1917 Harold James Nelson Kemp: died 28 May 1916
George Henry Ledgerton: died 2 November 1917
Frederick James Watson Lines: died 12 December 1915
Frank J Lodge: died 26 March 1917
Arthur Thomas Lorkin: died 26 March 1917
Hayden Lyle: died 6 November 1918
Llewellyn Malcomson: died 5 October 1916
Leonard Frederick Mason: died 12 September 1918
Ralph Milbank: died 23 March 1918
George Nelson: died 3 November 1917
George William Perry: died 17 November 1916
Francis Louis Pitts: died 15 June 1915
Bertram James Porter: died 2 September 1918
George Rawlings: died unknown
Arthur T Reed: died unknown
Harry Charles Edwin Robinson: died 28 March 1918
Henry Alfred Robson: died 28 April 1917
Frederick Isaac Rootkin: died 22 August 1915
Frank Edward Sams: died 1 November 1914
William George Saunders: died 26 March 1918
William Sayer(s): died 29 March 1915
Harold Mackenzie Scarfe: died 3 May 1917
Charles Edwin Sewell: died 24 March 1915
Frank Sewell: died 18 May 1917
Sidney Sharp: died 1 October 1918
Walter Sharp: died 9 April 1915
Arthur Smith: died unknown
Sidney J Smith,unknown Victor Spurgeon: died 8 October 1918
Percy A Stock: died 9 December 1917
Arthur George Stokes: died 26 October 1914
Ernest Archibald Stokes: died 19 February 1919
Edward Charles Stone: died 23 August 1918
William Matthew Stovold: died 6 November 1914
Montague Beavan Tench: died 10 August 1916
Harry Turbard: died 12 November 1915
Joseph A Turner: died unknwon
John S Wackrill: died 12 October 1918
William Waite: died 11 July 1917
John Joseph Walsh: died 19 November 1917
Edward Warner: died 21 March 1918
Hubert John Welch: died 29 September 1918 Arthur Albert Willett: died 25 February 1916 Frank Willett: died 23 October 1916
James Wilson: died 10 September 1915
A Edgar Yeldham: died 10 November 1917
Arthur William Young: died 21 November 1915
Not on the town’s war memorial but commemorated
on the Congregational Church’s memorial Walter Vosper Jakins: died 10 July 1917
Buried in St Mary’s Churchyard but not
commemorated on the town’s War Memorial Charles Henry Parham: died 30 June 1918
C Spiers: died 7 November 1918
They whom this tablet commemorates, at the call of King and country left all that was dear to them to endure hardships and face dangers. And then passed out of the sight of men by the path of duty and self-sacrifice giving up their lives that others might life in freedom.
Let those who come after see to it that their names be not forgotten
(War Memorial in St Mary’s Church, Dunmow)
Their Name Liveth For Evermore
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A year ago, I told the story of the Willett family of Great Dunmow, and how local photographer and newsagent, Arthur Willett, often took photographs of the town’s happenings, including the photo below, which he captioned as “Military Funeral 1/12/14”
At the time of my post, I puzzled over whose funeral it was, as it appeared to be a funeral of a soldier from the First World War, but the date of the funeral did not match any man on the Commonwealth War Graves’ Debt of Honour for 1914. An eagle-eyed reader of my blog spotted the answer in a book written by Great Dunmow’s local historian from the 1970s, Dorothy Dowsett. In her book Through all the changing seasons, hidden amongst Miss Dowsett’s considerable writings about the town and its inhabitants, is the answer to my conundrum.
The Military Funeral shown in the postcard was not that of a First World War casualty, but the funeral of a war veteran from the Second Boer War (1899-1902), Private William Gibson of the First Grenadier Regiment of the Foot Guards.
Private William Gibson, 1st Battalion Grenadier Guards, was the first soldier to be give a funeral with military honours in the town. He died at the age of forty-six in 1914, and was buried at the parish church. During his service he gained the Khartoum Medal, the South African Medal (1901), the Transvaal/Cape Colony Medal and the Sudan Medal. William Gibson served in the London expedition of 1898 under Major-General Lord Kitchener.
1911 Census – Star Lane, Great Dunmow William Gibson, Head, Married, aged 39, born 1872 Essex Stebbing, occupation Gas Stoker.
Sarah Gibson, Wife, Married, aged 42, born 1869 Essex Dunmow.
Charles Chevallier, Stepson, Single, aged 15, born 1896 Essex Dunmow
Ivy Chevallier, Stepdaughter, aged 11, born 1900 London Lambeth.
Sarah Gibson (nee Sarah Mead, b1871-d1955) married William Gibson in 1910. Prior to her marriage, she had been married to a man with the wonderful name of Temple Edgecombe Chevaillier, who according to this website about the Mead family of Great Dunmow, either divorced or abandoned her by 1899/1901. If you are interested in seeing a picture of Sarah Gibson, wife of the Boer War hero, the first man to be given a military funeral with full honours in the Essex town of Great Dunmow, do take a look at the Mead family website.
Star Lane, Great Dunmow. Home of William and Sarah Gibson. If you know Great Dunmow, you will know that the lane is very much the same as it was in the early 1900s. The houses on the left are still there, but the tree has long since been cut down.
Follow-up December 2013: Shortly after publishing this post, I bought at auction a series of postcards of Great Dunmow. Amongst the postcards was another (different) photo of the 1914 Military Funeral. My post Great Dunmow’s 1914 Military Funeral – A follow-up tells the story.
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It is a well known that during the Second World War (1939-1945), Britain prepared itself for the potential invasion of the country by Nazi Germany. However, not so well known is that during the First World War (1914-1918), with German Zeppelins flying over head in the skies above East Anglia and London, invasion by the Germans was also feared. Across rural East Anglia, various towns and villages set up Emergency Committees to inform and advise the population what to do in case of invasion.
Below is a leaflet written by Great Dunmow’s Emergency Committee informing the town what to do if the threat became reality and Germany invaded. The leaflet is dated January 1915, showing that fears of invasion had already been felt to be very real threat within the first 6 months of the Great War, and an evacuation plan had been drawn up.
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In 1928, an aeroplane flying above the skies of East Anglia, took these incredible aerial photographs of Great Dunmow
St Mary’s Church, Churchend, Great Dunmow. The churchyard is in the top left of the photo; the vicarage is opposite the entrance to the church. Bottom right is the cluster of houses in Church Street.
The junction of Market Street and High Street, Great Dunmow. The building at the top of the photograph (facing towards the camera) is the Starr Inn. The Tudor Town Hall (dating from the 16th Century) is the large building (with 3 windows facing the camera) on the right just after the junction .
Hasler and Company Corn and Seed Merchants, Great Dunmow. The tracks of the Bishops Stortford to Braintree branch line visible at the front of Hasler’s building. Chelmsford Road is the line of houses running horizontally across the photograph – with the fields & trees of Dunmow Park immediately behind the road. Great Dunmow Park is the far edge of the site of the original medieval manor of Great Dunmow. This manor was dower land given to Katherine of Aragon by Henry VIII when he married her in 1509.
Hasler and Company Corn and Seed Merchants, Great Dunmow. The railway line was closed to passengers in 1952, and freight in 1971. Great Dunmow’s bypass (the B1256) now follows the route of the railway line and the Flitch Way Country Park runs alongside.
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When fellow local historian, Austin Reeve, read my post about Great Dunmow’s Through all the changing seasons and the comments about the local boarding school, Berbice House, it prompted him to get in touch with me and send me 6 postcard images of the school. Adding his images to my own collection means that today I can bring you 9 photographs of Berbice House boarding school from the 1950s.
This boarding school was located on Great Dunmow’s Causeway at the place where today’s roundabout to Godfrey Way is located. The school building was demolished during the 1970s or the 1980s – and now, in its place is Godfrey Way (named after one of the heads of Berbice House School), a large winding road to the top of a hill containing hundreds of houses. There is turning off Godfrey Way, called ‘Berbice Lane’ – named after the school. Prior to the school being located in the building shown in the first photograph, during the 1940s, it was located in the Clock House.
Then
The Clockhouse – sometime during the early part of the 19th century.
Now
The Clockhouse – Summer 2013 – from the same location as the Edwardian postcard.
The top of the church steeple – visible from the highest point on Godfrey Way. The sun-scorched yellow fields of Stebbing in the distance.
Godfrey Way – looking back down the hill to where Berbice House once stood.
Godfrey Way and the fields of Stebbing in the distance.
Do you have any photos of your time at Berbice House School? If so, please do contact me
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During the stress of the last few months with my recent legal action against Essex County Council, Victorian photos – particularly those known as carte de visite photographs – have haunted my waking moments. This is perhaps a strange hobby for anyone to have – not least for it to manifest itself during a legal confrontation with an education authority and coping with their very modern-day shenanigans of denying a vulnerable child an education appropriate to his needs. However, pondering the stories of long dead people and searching out interesting Victorian portraits in the flea markets of London and on-line from that well known auction site has given me some small comfort during the utter madness of the last few months.
Even as a small child, I have always loved looking at photographs of long dead people in their Sunday finery. I can pinpoint my fascination back to early childhood when I first saw Victorian photos of my own ancestors. I am pleased I can give names to the photos of my ancestors, but it always greatly saddens me when I see photograph upon photograph of long dead unknown people. These people were someone’s much loved father, mother, child, granny, grandfather. Now their names and families are lost forever – all that remains is a shadowy image that they once existed – a single moment in time captured forever.
Today’s image is a carte de viste of two Victorian children in their Sunday best, playing with a very well-dressed and expensive horse-haired doll, captured through the lens of Great Dunmow’s Victorian photographer, William Stacey.
“Time present and time past Are both perhaps present in time future, And time future contained in time past. If all time is eternally present All time is unredeemable.”
Four Quartets by T.S Eliot, 1935
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Stacey of Great Dunmow – late Victorian wedding party
The Forecaster in 1976
Sugar Beet Factory in 1976
The last Dunmow Flitch – in 2012 –
Dunmow Flitch of Bacon Factory (Exterior)
Dunmow Bacon Factory – Pig Killing
Dunmow Bacon Factory – The Hanging Hall I. The child at the left of the picture looks to be about 12-14 years of age.
Dunmow Bacon Factory – Cleaving the pigs
Dunmow Bacon Factory – The Employees. Is the person 3rd from the left a woman?
Dunmow Bacon Factory – The Hanging Hall II
Dunmow Bacon Factory – The Manager and Irish Employees. It is interesting that the Irish Employees are in a photograph separate from the other employees.
Close-up of the Dunmow Flitch Bacon Factory from the air in 1928.
Harry Payne’s postcard of the Grenadier Guards
The Clockhouse – sometime during the early part of the 19th century.
The Clockhouse – Summer 2013 – from the same location as the Edwardian postcard.
The top of the church steeple – visible from the highest point on Godfrey Way. The sun-scorched yellow fields of Stebbing in the distance.
Godfrey Way – looking back down the hill to where Berbice House once stood.
Godfrey Way and the fields of Stebbing in the distance.
