Archive Gallery

Crowsteps, Newbury

Crowsteps, Tydehams, Newbury, Berkshire, c 1930. Herbert Felton (c 1887-1968), silver gelatin DOP (developing out paper) print. Designed by Thomas S Tait of Sir John Burnet, Tait & Lorne, and built in 1929, Crowsteps is one of the earliest Modernist houses in England. It was clearly inspired by the German architect Peter Behrena's New Ways in Northampton which was built between 1925 and 1926, and Tait was commissioned on the strength of his workers housing for Crittalla's at Silver End in Essex built between 1927 and 1928. Herbert Felton, whose professional reputation owed much to his photography of Modernist architecture, has used a low point of view to take advantage of the reflective qualities of the garden pool to double the mass of the house and fill the portrait-orientated negative. Felton's ability as an architectural photographer was such that he became the first professional photographer to be employed by the National Buildings Record in 1941

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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

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Hertford Square Coventry OP00980

Hertford Square, Coventry, West Midlands, 1953. John M Prest (1908-€“86), silver gelatin DOP (developing out paper) print. A van and lines of washing form a significant part of John Prest'€™s view of weavers'€™ housing in Hertford Square, Coventry in 1953. Prest was employed as a graduate apprentice in Coventry from 1952 to 1953 and his academic interest in domestic textile industries encouraged him to spend several years traveling the country to find and record weavers'€™ and other artisan houses. His photographs, mainly taken from streets and back alleys, show exactly what anyone could see for themselves if they cared to look, including traffic, pedestrians and other obstructions. The Royal Commission on the Historical Monuments of England acquired his collection in 1995

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