If you enjoy local history books that are full of fascinating facts and amusing anecdotes then you are going to love Swindon Photographers & Postcard Publishers.
Co authored by Local Studies librarian Darryl Moody and local historian Paul A. Williams, this compendium contains details of the numerous photographers who have recorded the people and places of Swindon since the photography craze took off in the mid-nineteenth century.
Darryl freely admits he has become obsessed with the weird characters and their strange lives. Most of the photographers had second jobs, many employed in the railway works, but apparently taxidermy was a popular side-line as well.
Paul Williams is related to ‘Wiltshire local history royalty’ with a family connection to William Hooper (see the book for more about Hooper) and Hammerman poet Alfred Williams.
Paul brought along some of Hooper’s photographic artefacts to the book launch held yesterday at Swindon Central Library including a stereoscopic viewer and the teddy bear Hooper’s young sitters were given to hold while having their photo taken.
Swindon Photographers & Postcard Publishers is the third in a growing catalogue of Swindon Libraries recent publications. The first was Swindon’s War Record a reprint of W.D. Bavin’s seminal work on Swindon during the First World War. The second was Roll of Honour 1939-1945 written by Katherine Cole, the first ever record of Swindon men who served in the Second World War.
Next in the publication pipeline is an update of Roadways – The History of Swindon’s Street Names written by Peter Sheldon and Richard Tomkins in 1979.
I will also be working with the Local Studies team on a book about the development of post war Swindon, taking in West Swindon and the important and relatively unchronicled history of Parks, Pinehurst and Penhill.
Of course, for me Swindon Photographers & Postcard Publishers has opened up a whole new avenue of research. Now I want to know more about photographers Minnie Kerslake (1874-1924) and Ethel Cowie (1884-1950?) and Beatrice Bollard who worked more recently in the 1960s and 70s. How many of these fascinating photographers lie in Radnor Street Cemetery and are long overdue for inclusion on one of our guided walks?
Swindon Photographers & Postcard Publishers is published by The Hobnob Press and costs £7.99. Copies are available in the Library Shop, Swindon Central Library.
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