Today’s post is continuing on my posts about Edwardian postcards and Victorian photographs which didn’t make it into my new local history book, Bishop’s Stortford Through Time. I have published this photograph before on my blog and on Twitter, but so far have had no success in identifying it. So I’m going to try once again to see if anyone can identify these young ladies. Someone has suggested to me that it is probably from the inter-war period – possibly the 1920s – because of the dropped waists on the girls’ dresses.
Do you have any idea who these young ladies of Bishop’s Stortford were? The photographers were H & A Gurton who were active in the town from the First World War and on into the 1920s.
My book
If you want to learn more about this historic East Hertfordshire town, please do click on the image below to buy my book.
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I am very pleased to say that my new book on the local history of the town of Bishop’s Stortford is now available in all good local bookshops. If you are not local to the town (and I think a great number of my blog’s readership has an ocean or two between you and Bishop’s Stortford’s local shops!), you’ll be pleased to know that Amazon now has their copies in stock.
I had immense fun researching and writing my book. “Having” to consult archives, consult Tudor churchwardens’ accounts (my favourite bed-time reading!), read Victorian newspaper articles and write my text was absolute bliss. Not to mention the countless nights I had to stay up late, so I could bid at the last minute on that well known internet auction site, thus securing that precious and highly important postcard of the town’s past. (Unfortunately for my pocket, there were many many postcards which I just “had to have” at any cost!) After years spent commuting and working in the City of London as a business technologist, being able to do my passion – researching and writing about history – was absolute bliss. Now, when people ask me what my profession is, I hover in deciding to tell them which of my two careers is my profession. That I am a freelance business technologist working for some of the world’s largest international law firms in the City of London. Or, a published local historian and author working from home. (I am immensely proud of both my careers.)
There were several postcards that “got away”. Postcards and images in my collection which I would have loved to have included in my book – but for one reason or another, I couldn’t. Some images were excluded because I simply didn’t know what the image was about – apart from it was “somewhere” in Bishop’s Stortford; and others where I had so many images of the same building/view/area that I had to choose one postcard over the many other images. With other views of Bishop’s Stortford, I had written their story but then had to cull that story and images from my book because there simply wasn’t room.
So, every week, starting this week, I’ve decided to blog some of the photos and stories that I couldn’t include in my book. These are the ones that got away!
St Michael’s Church, Windhill, Bishop’s Stortford
The image below is an intriguing one. It is a small Victorian carte de visite (or CDV) photograph of St Michael’s Church, in Windhill. The CDV has perfectly square corners, and a plain back but, unfortunately, there’s no photographer’s information. It is probably one of the earliest photographs of Bishop’s Stortford: according to my research, square cornered CDVs are normally pre 1870. I thought that the gas lamp might give me a clue as to the date of the photograph – but according to good ole wikipedia, many towns were lit by gas lamps as early as 1823. I think that this view might roughly date from before 1870.
St Michael’s Parish Church, Windhill, Bishop’s Stortford, sometime between 1850s and 1870s
The intriguing part of this photograph is the wooden structure at the front of the church. At first glance it looks like a small ticket booth. However, look closely… It is actually a very large structure. It is big enough to have what looks like 2 oval church windows at the front. Look again: there’s two tiny children climbing up a ladder – a ladder of about 7 steps. A very strange “ticket booth” if you have to climb up a ladder to get into it! The structure has a wooden board at the top with printed words on it (if only the Victorian photographer had got just a little bit nearer – and then we could have read it on our modern-day computers!).
There were building works which took place in St Michael’s church and were completed in November 1866. At this time, the east windows in the north and south aisles were replaced with new ones in the same style as the existing windows. Maybe the structure was the master craftsmen’s workshop to help them build new windows. Maybe the little girls have shimmed up the ladder to take a peak in the work rooms. Inquisitive Victorian children captured forever.
What’s going on! Can you help me and tell me what this structure was?
Was it the craftsmen’s workrooms for the work which took place in 1866??
My book
If you want to learn more about this historic East Hertfordshire town, please do click on the image below to buy my book.
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This blog
If you want to read more from my blog, please do subscribe either by using the Subscribe via Email button top right of my blog, or the button at the very bottom. If you’ve enjoyed reading this post, then please do Like it with the Facebook button and/or leave a comment below.
I am absolutely delighted to tell you that my first local history book is in the final stage of its publication. It’s due to be in all good book shops in the UK 15 September 2014 – but you can pre-order it at a very reasonable price from Amazon.co.uk. In the USA, it will be available on 28 September – Amazon.com
I hope that if you do decide to buy it, you will like it. Many readers of my blog and correspondents on Twitter have actively encouraged me to write my book, and many have helped with the identification of postcards and photographs of Bishop’s Stortford. A massive thank you to everyone who helped me.
If you wish to pre-order my book from Amazon, please do click on the picture below. I’d love you to tell me in the comments section below on this page if you do decide to buy it. If you’re out and about, and see my book in a bookshop, I would love it if you sneakily made it more prominent to potential browsers and purchasers.
From its earliest days, Bishop’s Stortford was a prosperous town, something that continues up to the present day. After the manor of Stortford was purchased by the Bishop of London in the eleventh century, Bishop’s Stortford developed into a thriving market town in the Middle Ages. The opening of the Stort Navigation in 1769, along with the introduction of the railway in the nineteenth century, further increased its prosperity. Today, with excellent transport links to London, and Stansted Airport providing access to the rest of the world, Bishop’s Stortford is a town on the rise. Featuring full-colour images and fantastic vintage postcards, Bishop’s Stortford Through Time takes the reader on a fascinating journey of the town’s history and how it became what it is today.
One of the pages from my book- my wonderful children and their husband/partner alongside an image from the early 1900s. Some parts of Bishop’s Stortford haven’t changed at all (apart from the cars!).
I am delighted to say that during my research into the town, one of my daughters and her partner fell in love with the town, and so have decided to make Bishop’s Stortford their home. They moved into the town in July – one of the many young couples who have found that Bishop’s Stortford certainly has a lot to offer them.
PS: You may wonder why the town is called “Bishop’s Stortford” (always always always with an apostrophe after “bishop”). It’s because at the time of William the Conqueror’s Doomsday survey (1086), the manor of Storteford was owned by the Bishop of London. Hence the town should really be called “The Bishop of London’s Stortford”. But I guess Bishop’s Stortford or, as it’s more commonly known to locals, simply “Stortford”, will do. If you want to find out more about this historic town, then please do buy my book Bishop’s Stortford Through Time
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If you want to read more from my blog, please do subscribe either by using the Subscribe via Email button top right of my blog, or the button at the very bottom. If you’ve enjoyed reading this post, then please do Like it with the Facebook button and/or leave a comment below.
Over the last few months, I have been writing and researching my first local history book – Bishop’s Stortford Through Time for Amberley Publishing. My book is a pictorial history of this Hertfordshire town, and uses vintage postcards from the early 1900s and compares them to modern day photographs of the same area.
Yesterday my husband, son and myself spent a beautiful sunny day walking the river banks of The Stort – taking the “now” photos of Victorian and Edwardian postcards. All was going very well – we managed to locate all the spots where our predecessors – such as Edwardian photographers Arthur Maxwell and Harry Mardon – stood over a hundred years ago to take their photographs. So, we lined up the shots, and my husband being the keen long-time photographer, took the photographs.
All went very well… Until we returned home.
Then, I discovered to my horror that half the photos have a slightly bluey tinge to them. Somehow, my husband had accidentally “flipped a switch” on his supa-dupa modern digital camera, and subsequent photos now have a weird tinge. Half are fine and really good shots. And half are not. Fortunately the shots where my son was hanging onto a tree perilously close to the water’s edge survived – as did the shots which could only be taken after my husband had, with the elegance of a ballerina, shimmied over a very high metal fence.
I thought I’d share my blue shots with you. They would have been good, wouldn’t they!
River Stort, at Trout Bridge, Gipsy Lane – on the very borders between Hertfordshire and Essex
The River Stort, Twyford Lock
The River Stort, Twyford Mill (through the trees on the left)
And this is the colour the photos should have been! The glorious colours of early summer at South Mill Lock
Oh well – back to the drawing board! I wonder what photographic problems my Edwardian predecessors had? At least hiking along the banks of the picturesque River Stort is a beautiful walk.
PS: If you are out in Bishop’s Stortford and see us intrepid three, please do come and say hi to us – we’re very easy to spot!
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This blog
If you want to read more from my blog, please do subscribe either by using the Subscribe via Email button top right of my blog, or the button at the very bottom. If you’ve enjoyed reading this post, then please do Like it with the Facebook button and/or leave a comment below.
Hmmm – nearly two months since my last post on this blog. Sorry, that’s really not good enough of me. However, my writing is continuing frantically away in the background whilst I work my forthcoming book Bishop’s Stortford Through Time for Amberley Publishing.
I’m also writing a monthly post on Worldwide Genealogy – a collaboration of genealogists and local historians from all round the world. On that blog, I have been posting articles about my paternal grandmother’s family, the Gurney family of South London. You may be interested in reading my posts
My work on Bishop’s Stortford Through Time is going very well. If you live in the area and are around on a Sunday morning, you will see myself and my husband walking the length and breadth of the town and river, taking photographs for the book. Mind you, you will have to get up extra early, as we’ve discovered that the only time the roads are safe enough to take photos is very early on a Sunday morning! A couple of times my husband has had to stand in the middle of what were once sleepy rural country roads but are now super-fast highways, where he has had to take his life into his hands for my precious book. Hockerill crossroads and the Causeway to name just two roads which were once sleepy quiet backwaters but now have lorries, cars and other assorted vehicles thundering through on them.
So, now for an update on my book:-
I have to write 96 pages comprising of 90 vintage postcards alongside 90 modern-day photographs. Having exhausted that well-known internet auction site (plus several others not so well known), and plundered the stocks of my local friendly postcard dealer at Battlesbridge Antiques Centre, I now have 75 postcards to be used in my book.
So I am missing an elusive 15 postcards…
Can you help me? I am looking for postcards (preferably pre-1920) particularly of the following areas of Bishop’s Stortford. If you are out and about at antique fairs during these beautiful Spring weekends, please keep a look out for me.
– Bishop’s Stortford train station (or trains in the station)
– South Street by the publisher Wrench (or any postcards of South Street except any which show the Methodist Chapel)
– South Road – particularly the almshouses (but not the Rhodes Museum)
– Holy Trinity Church, South Street
– The Workhouse
– The Corn Exchange
– Market Square
– The Cemetery
– Any roads in Newtown (eg Portland Road, Apton Road)
– Any real photographs of The Wharf or the Hockerill Cut (real photographs only though)
And here’s one I found earlier… A photograph by Bishop’s Stortford photographers H & A Gurton (who were active during the First World War). I do not know what the uniform is – someone has suggested that it could be a Sunday School uniform. If you know, please do drop me an email.
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This blog
If you want to read more from my blog, please do subscribe either by using the Subscribe via Email button top right of my blog, or the button at the very bottom. If you’ve enjoyed reading this post, then please do Like it with the Facebook button and/or leave a comment below.
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St Michael’s Parish Church, Windhill, Bishop’s Stortford, 
What’s going on! Can you help me and tell me what this structure was?
River Stort, at Trout Bridge, Gipsy Lane – on the very borders between Hertfordshire and Essex
The River Stort, Twyford Lock
The River Stort, Twyford Mill (through the trees on the left)
And this is the colour the photos should have been! The glorious colours of early summer at South Mill Lock