~RPS ROYAL PHOTOGRAPHIC SOCIETY
Archaeology& Heritage Group Chairman Chelin Miller LRPS 49 Stephens Road Tunbridge Wells, Kent TN4 9JD 01892 670056 Chelinmiller@hotmail.com Secretary
Rodney Thring LRPS 27, College Ride Camberley, Surrey GU15 4JP 01276 20725 rodney.thring@ntlworcl.com
Treasurer Jim Tonks ARPS Earlton, 174, ChairboroughRoad High Wycombe Bucks HP12 3HW 01494 443061 francistonks@hotmail.com Editor Eric Houlder LRPS 31, Fairview Carleton, PontefractWF8 3NT West Yorkshire 01977 702995 erichoulder@gmail.com Committee Ken Keen FRPS R Keith Evans FRPS Chelin MillerLRPS (Webmaster) Dr Mike Sasse Garry BisshoppARPS Walter Brooks Eric Houlder LRPS Editor Published by the Archaeology& Heritage Group of the Royal Photographic Society, June 2015. ISSN 0-904495-00-0 . Copyright in all text and pictures is held by the credited authors, or as otherwise stated. No part of this publicationmay be reproduced,transmitted or stored in any form without prior written permission of the Publisher.
Coverpicture:Archer at Agincourt. Minolta X500, 28-
B0mmlens, polariser, Fuji Provis 100.Scanned by lab. Theposition is on the English lefl close to Azincourt village.
CHAIRMAN'S LETTER Welcome to the first issue of Heritage Photographysince our 2015 Committeeelections. I write this in my new role as your Chairman, and I wish to thank those present at the AGM for their support. I am honouredto have been elected and I am very much looking forward to taking on this important role. In particular my deepest gratitude to Keith Evans for the fantastic job he has done as Chairman for the past six years. His leadership and clear vision have been much appreciated by all members and his shoes will be hard to fill. Keith's mentorship and advice have been instrumental in my understandingof heritage photography. I joined the Archaeology and Heritage Group in October 2013, soon after I arrived in England after spending a few years in South America and in Asia, where I had rediscovered my love for photography. I received a very warm welcome when I attended the A&H Group Conference: friendly members, interestingtalks and beautiful images were all it took to convince me that I wanted to join the group. The fantastic array and regularity of events is another feature that attracted me to this group. I soon took on the role of webmaster from Mike Sasse, who had done an excellentjob for years, and I have been attending as many outings as possible. Since the last edition of Heritage Photographywe have had fascinating events: the BrooklandsMuseum of Motoring and Aviation; visits to the always-captivatingSalisbury Cathedral and to three City of London churches; and a Joint Special Interest Group Conferenceorganised by the South East Region (Creative, Digital Imaging, Imaging Science and A&H). During the AGM and Print Day, participantscould see the printed work of other members close-up; listen to the stories behind the pictures;find out about technical details and ask questions about workflow and post-processing. I find it fascinating to listen to everyone's passionateopinions on film/digital, monochrome/colour,darkroom/inkjet,etc. We learn so much from each other. The forthcoming programmeof activities has still a lot to offer: more outings to ancient churches, stately homes, a workshop on how to make contact negatives from digital files for traditional printing methods, and the much anticipated Conference in October. With so much to see and do, I hope I will be able to meet many of you personally. Leaming and developing our skills is always high on everybody's agenda and one of the benefits of being a member of the RPS is the possibility to improve our abilities by trying for a distinction. I would like to congratulatethe following A&H members who have recently been awarded distinctions: Ms Anne Whiteley LRPS and Mr James RanahanARPS. Having an interest in things from the past does not mean that we live in the past, and I believe we need to embrace the internet and modem technology as well as traditional ways. Modem technology offers extraordinaryopportunities;we can use it to enhance the way we deliver on members' expectations,with faster, paperless, globalised communications.We can use it to showcase our work on the RPS website and find out about the things that matter to us. I believe that the best way to learn more about photography • the subject that we all love and have a passion for • is to share our experiences with others. I would like to see more interactionwith Regions and other SIGs, as well as with institutions and societies with similar interests. Details of our events are published online on the group's website http://rps.org/specialinterest-groups/archaeology-and-heritage,as well as the Journal (Member Guide). If there is anything in particularthat is relevant to archaeologyand heritage photography that you would like to feature in our calendar of events, please contact me at heritageweb@rps.org. Last but not least, I would like to thank all the members of the Committee: Ken, Keith, Rodney, Jim, Eric, Mike, Garry, as well as former member Martin, for their support, encouragementand inspiration;for their passion, dedication and commitment.
Eric Houlder LRPS.
Chelfn Miller LRPS
Heritage Photography Summer 2015, Page 2
EDITORIAL Welcome to the new look Heritage Photography. New look, because in its last incarnation our journal did not conform to RPS guidelines. Hopefully, our present format will begin the move towards full conformity. I am happy and grateful to extend the Editorial thanks to those group members who have contributed pictures and/or articles. Please keep them coming in as the next issue is due in October. The significant dates which fall this year are particularly poignant to those of us, a shrinking minority now, who remember the last days of the war in Europe. Memories of bonfires, the first bananas appearing in the greengrocers' shops, a tanned stranger in uniform on the front step, are things we wish had been recorded in pictures. Perhaps they were elsewhere, but not in our household. Two other significant anniversaries this year caused me a moment of deep embarrassment at a meal with three French friends. One of
them asked me if I was following the current commemorations, and without thinking I blurted out, ''Yes, Agincourt and Waterloo!" Luckily they took it in good part, but it taught me to 'engage brain before opening mouth,' to quote the above mentioned tanned stranger. Magna Carta, Richard lll's funeral, World War anniversaries and the two battles mentioned above will give us all plenty of camera fodder in the coming months. I hope to see some of the results and publish your pictures and articles too. Meanwhile, have a productive summer; I fully intend to. The Cover imageis of part of the battlefield of Agincourt, shot on film. It shows the view from the English front line near Azincourt village, looking diagonally across the front towards the burial pits in the distant wood. Minimal cleaning up applied, such as cloning out the bolts holding the silhouette to the telegraph pole! More on Agincourt in October. Eric Houlder LRPS.
THE SCOTTISH BARONIAL TENEMENT BUILDINGS OF MARCHMONT IN EDINBURGH RobertGallowayLRPS. Marchmont is located about 1 mile south of Edinburgh Castle on the southern edge of 'the Meadows', a substantial open space which became a public park. For the short period from 1876-c.1888, tenement building in Marchmont adopted -the Scottish Baronial style, the 'fairytale castle' architecture of turrets, gables, carved string courses, shields and plaques favoured for Scottish country houses earlier in the century. At that til'Jle there was a market for more elaborately decorated tenement flats for occupants who wished to show off their rising status. Possibly because of competition be-
tween architects and builders of neighbouring tenements, they produced a flamboyant extravaganza of Scottish Baronial features within a few streets. However, many of these decorative features are high up, even at roof level, and so easily escape full appreciation by passers-by in the present day busy streets. In the tradition of Scottish tenement building, construction was in sandstone, sometimes grey, slightly yellow or pink. The photographs here are intended to draw attention to the variety of decorative details and
Heritage Photography Summer 2015, Page 3
Lighting was by the low but bright winter sunshine of January and February and the times of photographing were chosen to provide side The photographs were taken using a Sony lighting of the buildings in order to emphasise a 100 camera with Sony 18 - 70mm lens at the building details. RAW images were recordabout 20mm for whole buildings and a Minolta ed and subsequently worked on in Photoshop 100 - 300mm lens at 100 or 200mm for details; Elements as required, to correct verticals, crop, the aperture was f22 or f25 and with ISO 100 remove any blemishes (dust spots usually) and an exposure of about 1/10 sec. was typical. The to add some sharpening as A3 prints were recamera was mounted on a Manfrotto tripod and quired for two local exhibitions. a cable release used to minimise vibration.
the craftsmanship in the tenement buildings of Marchmont.
Comer of Warrender Park Road and Marchmont Street, 1887, architect Thomas Gibson.
Comer of Marchmont Road and Wa,render Park Te,race, 1879, architect Edward Calvert
A gable with fine carving in Marchmont Street
Bay windows topped by an elaborately carved balcony and backed by a crowstepped gable.
Heritage Photography Summer 2015, Page 4
Above: Examples of plaques on gables in Marchmont Road, each individually carved.
Left:Typical gable in Marchmont Road, 1880, architect JohnCHay.
Above : Marchmont Road, date plaque (1879) by architect Edward Calvert in a modem-looking style.
Right above: Examples of plaques in Marchmont Road, top John Pyper builder, ten Stratheam Building Company, right Charles J. Hay architect.
Len: Decorative stonework in Marchmont Road, 1880, archi. feet Alexander W Macnaughtan, built in a ve!JIgrey stone compared with most buildings in the area. Right: Decorative stonework, Marchmont Road, 1887, archit ect William Hogg.
¡
Heritage Photography Summer 2015, Page 5
A TASTE OF LIQUORICE By Eric HoulderLRPS.
When Sir John Betjeman visited Pontefract, he was guided around the town by a small group of local enthusiasts. A compulsory halt was in the last field to bear a crop of liquorice, now long since re-developed - it's a fire station! One of the locals asked him, "It must be a long time since you were last here, Sir John?" His reply was to the point, "My boy, I have never been here before in my life!" For those of us who had studied his famous poem The Licorice Fields of Pontefract [sic], this was confirmation of something we had long suspected. His description matched any number of other West Riding towns, especially those in the Heavy Woollen District, built on and of millstone grit and other dark rocks, but hardly fitted Pontefract with its honeycoloured magnesian limestone. Again, the liquorice was grown in a long-drained marsh area right on the edge of the Vale of York, so it was flat too, and the only mills around were two derelict windmills. However, each time I hear the poet's name mentioned, I remember that little anecdote, which brings to mind my struggles with two ancient transparencies and a century-old glass negative to create a postcard for sale locally. Back in 1965, the current crop of liquorice was reaching its final stage before harvest, and the grower w~ s already declaring that this would be the final crop. Foreign imports were pulling the financial ground out from beneath his feet, whilst the skilled labour to
harvest the root was dying off- literally. Meanwhile, this amateur photographer and heritage enthusiast was gradually building up a photographic system intended largely to record excavations but also to witness history-making events. Being recently married, the funds for this were somewhat short, but I felt justified in asking Joan, my wife, to buy me the latest and best exposure meter on the market for Christmas that year: the Weston Master V. In order to appear frugal, I had purchased a stock of outdated 40 ASA Anscochrome, an American film whjch gave a pleasing pastel-like rendering. That Christmas we had invited my parents around for Christmas dinner (in Yorkshire we still call --~~ ----:;: ....,J V:°::: --.::.;;J~ the midday meal din'... ner except in southern company. The concept of lunch is fairly recent and has not caught on yet) and after they both dozed off and we had finished the washing up - no machine then - I suggested a brisk walk. Joan was tired too, having just cooked the biggest meal of the year, so I grabbed my gadget bag and walked off down the lane in front of our then house. At the end was the field containing that final crop. I had a new meter to try out, a fresh (ish) film in the camera, and life was good. There was still plenty of light left in the sky so I went mad and exposed two whole
Heritage Photography Summer 2015, Page 6
frames, one of which was slightly over-exposed. I discovered later that my prized Aires Penta had a shutter with an intermittent fault. However, the slides were mounted and filed away. Two years before, we had mounted a small exploratory dig in advance of contractors at the local hospital. On the site was a largish wooden hut, once the property of the Glovers, a local family who had sold the land to the hospital. Coincidently, this land had also been used to cultivate liquorice. We used the hut as a dig HQ. Fred Morris, a digger, discovered a cache of quarter plate glass negatives in the hut, and when we vacated the site he took them home. They were filthy with the accumulated dirt of over half a century, so it was two years later when he eventually approached me with one plate in an envelope. Holding it up to the light I could see that it showed two men, and they were clearly and obviously harvesting liquorice. At that time there was no surviving picture of liquorice cultivation, so this was a major discovery. My enlarger would accept no negative larger than 6cm. square, so I made a careful contact print on glossy paper, and copied this with my SLR. Fred took back the negative and the contact print, both of which disappeared after his death some years later. Meanwhile, I made an enlargement, dodging and burning to compensate for the deterioration of the years. The top of the image had become faded through light exposure during storage, and I was able to burn this in somewhat. This picture became a local classic, and though other early snaps of the processes eventually turned up, they were just that - snaps. The Glover Image, as it is called, was the product of a skilled amateur who was not just recording history but shooting his family at work. The hut had been his darkroo rtl, workroom, and perhaps his private space. What other historic treas-
¡
ures lay in those negatives? Sadly, we shall never know. We must now fast forward to the present day. My society, PontArch, planned a postcard on liquorice to sell to the many visitors to the medieval hermitage which we open as stewards on behalf of the NHS Trust on whose land it lies. I scanned and restored both the transparencies of the liquorice crop, and then the print from 1965 of the contact print. At this stage I regretted the disappearance of the original negative, and the loss, in a subsequent house move, of my 35mm copy negative. The society wanted a large, 7"x 5" card with several images on, including one of a group of Pomfret Cakes, and of course the PontArch logo. None were going to be reproduced very big, so I cheated and shot the sweets using my Fujifilm bridge camera and a yellow infinity-curve background. As expected, this¡turned out to be quite adequate. Once the Glover Image was digitised, it became possible to restore the bleached-out top to some extent. Rather than throw the cakes away, I ate them and re-discovered a liking for them which had been surfeited by living next to the factory as a child - it now makes Polo Mints. I also re-discovered their other effect, of which I need say little here! One mistake I made was to assume that all relevant information would be on the reverse of the card. It was, but it was discovered during the sale of the cards that a title such as Liquorice Growing on the front would have helped sales considerably. After fifty years, a local farmer is beginning to grow liquorice again. However, my early transparencies are still the only record of the last real commercial crop, whilst the Glover Image is a unique record of traditional harvesting techniques. oOo
Heritage Photography Summer 2015, Page 7
BRIAN TREMAIN FRPS 5th February 1935 - 18th February 2015. We regret to record the death of Brian Tremain FRPS, a founder member in 1974 of the then Archaeological Group, and its first Secretary. His memories of those early days were vividly recalled in the Fortieth Anniversary issue of Heritage Photography, that of Spring 2014. Born in Whitstable, Kent on 5 February 1935, Brian's entire career was spent as a professional photographer - in the words of his son Robert, "a life doing something that he loved". His first job was as an assistant photographer at the Victoria & Albert Museum in London. From there he went on to the Science Museum, followed by a short time at the Ministry of Agriculture, Fisheries and Food. Brian then spent many years as Principal Photographer at the National Maritime Museum, and for the final six years before his retirement in 1990 was Chief Photographer at the British Museum, with an office on Montague Place. For much of his career he was an active member of The Royal Photographic Society, rewarded with a Fellowship and in 1983 with the Society's prestigious Hood Medal for his 'Services to Museum and Archaeological Photography.'
When in early 1974 a number of RPS members had suggested the formation of an Archaeological Group, Brian was an enthusiastic supporter, and at its inaugural meeting in London on 2 April 1974, under the chairmanship of The Revd. Robert Pitt, he volunteered to take the Minutes. A week later, the first Committee Meeting met to elect officers and committee members - not surprisingly, the posts of Chairman and Secretary went respectively to Bob Pitt and Brian Tremain. For Brian, this was the start of an unbreken relationship with what became the A & H Group: for some years on the committee, from time to time providing Conference presentations and workshops, and throughout his long ¡retirement a reliable contributor of articles for its newsletters and latterly to Heritage Photography. Brian's presence will be much missed by his many colleagues and RPS friends. He is survived by his wife Vivienne and their sons Andrew, David and Robert. R. Keith Evans.
- ;......a
A personal tribute from our Editor appears below.
MEMORIES OF BRIAN My memories of Brian go back to the earliest days of the Group which he was instrumental in founding. He was amongst a number of members who ventured north to arrange a conference in Durham, during which expedition he with Bob Pitt and several others came for a meal here shortly after we had moved in; I still cringe at the thought of what he and the others made of the wallpap~r! His instruction during sessions at the Maritime Museum was invaluable, and still remembered and practised today.
Later, when I edited our newsletter Brian could be relied upon to supply excellent articles with immaculate images. His contribution to later Group Conferences was invaluable, though the image he shot of your editor trying to black out a high window is safely hidden away; a perfect image - technically! Sadly, living at opposite ends of the country, we met infrequently after the heady early days of the Group, but we always stayed in touch. I shall miss him. Eric Houlder.
Heritage Photography Summer 2015, Page 8