Photos of Victorian Era Britain

Photos of Victorian Britain: St Paul's Cathedral and Barnard Castle feature

Today, if you look across at St Paul's Cathedral from the other side of the Thames, the sprawling steel of the Millennium Bridge might be firmly in your eyeline too.

But, back in the 19th century, there was no crossing on that part of the river - as one old photograph reveals. 

The unencumbered view without the bridge was snapped in the latter part of Queen Victoria's reign by pioneering photographer George Washington Wilson.

Now, a collection that includes that image and more than 8,000 other black and white photographs of scenes in Britain has been acquired for the nation by heritage body Historic England. 

The images were collated by renowned collector Janette Rosing, who died in 2021.

Other scenes that feature in the collection include County Durham's Barnard Castle and a cobbled street in Bethnal Green in London's East End.   

A picture taken from Bankside looking across the River Thames takes in  Paul's wharf, St Paul's Pier and St Paul's Cathedral in the background. The image was taken by pioneering Scottish photographer George Washington Wilson

The collection features images dating back to the early days of photography in the mid 19th century, all the way up to the 1950s. 

The images therefore cover a time of immense change for Britain, as industrialisation, urbanisation and developments in transport transformed the country.

Every English county features in images taken by pioneering photographers of the time. 

Born and raised in London, Rosing's obsession with historical images began when she stumbled upon an old photo of Hartland Quay on the Devon coast, before it was ravaged by a storm.

This discovery sparked her fascination with depictions of England in old photographs, and she spent her life attending photograph fairs and auctions in pursuit of new acquisitions for her collection.

Over the course of her life, she gathered expertise that saw her become an advisor to collectors, museums and international auction houses.  

Her collection has been acquired as part of the Government's Acquisition in Lieu scheme, administrated by Arts Council England. 

Adults and children sit on a bench at local beauty spot The Lookout at Clovelly in Devon. The image was taken by a mystery photographer in the latter part of the 19th century

A view looking along the River Tees towards the ruins of Barnard Castle, County Durham, in the 1860s. The picture was taken by Manchester-born photographer James Mudd, who was known for his industrial subjects

Former weavers' tenement houses at 3-5 Club Row in Bethnal Green in London's East End, with advertisements on the side elevation. The photo was taken in 1953 by William Whiffin, who pioneered street photography in East London

Samuel Smith sitting on the porch steps at the ruined Norfolk manor Hunstanton Hall, shortly after it was largely destroyed by fire, July 11, 1853

St Clement's Church in Sandwich, Kent, seen from the south, with a cart and thatched buildings in the foreground. The image was taken in the mid 1850s 

The ruins of St Joseph's Chapel at Glastonbury Abbey in Somerset, photographed by British pioneer Linnaeus Tripe in 1853

Looking down Watermouth Bay in Devon towards the open sea in the distance. Taken in the later part of the 19th century by an unknown photographer

Fishing boats in the harbour at Clovelly, Devon, with the seaside town's Red Lion Hotel in the background. The image was taken by British photographer James Valentine in 1885

Fishing boats in the harbour at Plymouth, with the Barbican - the original harbour - in the background. The photo was taken by WJ Cox in the latter part of the 19th century

The scheme allows people to donate important cultural items to museums and galleries in return for a tax reduction, there ensuring that collections like Rosing's are preserved for the benefit of the public. 

Since arriving at the Historic England Archive, the photographs have undergone a detailed conservation assessment and await further cataloguing and digitisation. 

Ian Savage, collections manager at Historic England said: 'From maritime scenes by James Mudd to detailed architectural studies by Linnaeus Tripe, each photograph in this exceptional collection offers a glimpse into the past, showcasing Janette Rosing's expert eye for quality. 

'Rosing's collection will continue to connect us with our history and inspire future generations to appreciate England's rich cultural legacy.'

Chief executive Duncan Wilson said: 'We are delighted to have acquired this historic collection, assembled by the photography expert Janette Rosing over 50 years of assiduous and discerning collecting. 

'The photographs provide a wealth of images of England from the second half of the 19th century through to the early 20th century. 

'The scale and rarity of her collection makes this archive of images of great national significance.'

https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-14418005/Fascinating-photos-Victorian-Britain-St-Pauls-Cathedral.html

Some Colorized Pictures: Street vendors: The flower women of Covent Garden, above left, of whom Thomson and Smith write: 'A child has generally been reared to follow in her parents' footsteps; and the 'beat' in front of the church is not merely the property of its present owners, it has been inherited from previous generations of flower-women.' The poor flowers sellers operating outside Covent Garden were a world away from the wealthy grocers selling their wares in the market and already victims of the supply-and-demand business pitfalls even in 1870. Journalist Adolphe Smith wrote: 'The familiar sight of a poor woman holding a pale child in her arms and offering modest violets to the pedestrian, is pregnant with a poetry which rags and dirt fail to obliterate. In exchange for nature's gifts, she seems to challenge human compassion; and shall the heart of man remain cold where the produce of field and garden are so bounteous and beautiful?'

Old 'Scotty', here holding a baby wrapped in her shawl, was the wife of a wealthy man who spent all his money before dying, leaving her peniless and one of London's 'crawlers' (beggars). She told John Thomson: 'I am becoming more accustomed to it now... What, however, I cannot endure, is the awful lazy, idle life I am forced to lead; it is a thousand times worse than the hardest labour, and I would much rather my hands were cut, blistered, and sore with toil, than, as you see them, swollen, and red, and smarting from the exposure to the sun, the rain, and the cold.' 'Huddled together on the workhouse steps in Short's Gardens, those wrecks of humanity, the Crawlers (beggars) of St. Giles's, may be seen both day and night seeking mutual warmth and mutual consolation in their extreme misery. As a rule, they are old women reduced by vice and poverty to that degree of wretchedness which destroys even the energy to beg. Old age, and want of proper food and rest, reduces them to a lethargic condition which can scarcely be preferable to death itself,' Adolphine Smith wrote

Army recruiters hang around a pub at Westminster waiting to encourage young lads into service. For posterity, they are (from right to left): Sergeant Ison, of the 6th Dragoon Guards; Sergeant Titswell, of the 5th Dragoon Guards; Sergeant Badcock, of the 2nd Dragoons, or Scots Greys; Sergeant Bilton, of the Royal Engineers; Sergeant Minett, of the 14th Hussars; and Sergeant McGilney, of the 6th Dragoons. In 1869, the year before these photos were taken, the British forces had nearly 8,000 men desert when the call to arms came. These recruiting sergeants in Westminster would have had to choose their next influx of men carefully

The Temperance Sweep: John Day, a chimney sweep, with his tools of the trade. Day was sent out to work young, as his father was addicted to drink and encouraged John to work for beer money. When this photo was taken, however, Day was described as a prosperous family man and an advocate for total abstinence. Once a heavy drinker, war veteran and criminal himself, Day gave up alcohol and his business subsequently prospered. By this time there were around 2,000 chimney sweeps in London

While the boy cleaning shoes in the photo above left looks barely a teenager, by the time this photo was taken he had served in two brigades (the 'blues' and the 'reds'), sailed the oceans as a sailor, and was now an 'independent shoe-black' to support his mother and invalid father with a few pence cleaning boots. He shines the man's shoe in search of a scant reward. Shoeshines who were not part of a registered 'brigade' were viewed dimly by the local police and were frequently punished

Cheap Fish of St Giles: With fish laid out on an open table in the middle of a busy street, this fishmonger aims to sell as much of his produce as he can before the stench and muck becomes unbearable. Fish was a reliable, and affordable, source of food for London's poor. The fishmonger is this photo was called Joseph Carney and was having a good day at his pitch near Seven Dials in Covent Garden, according to Smith. He has bought a barrel of 500 fresh herrings for 25 shillings and is selling 200 of the bigger ones for a penny each. He's unloading the smaller ones for a halfpenny

Furniture sales: Adolphe Smith: 'At the corner of Church Lane, Holborn, there was a second-hand furniture dealer, whose business was a cross between that of a shop and a street stall. The dealer was never satisfied unless the weather allowed him to disgorge nearly the whole of his stock into the middle of the street, a method which alone secured the approval and custom of his neighbours.' Unfortunately, Church Lane was in 'disagreeable proximity' to New Oxford Street and the shop's wares were not to a high enough standard so the shopkeeper and many of his neighbours found it untenable to live in the area in the forthcoming years,' Smith wrote

Regarded by journalist Adolphe Smith as rather more talented than the 'squalid and degraded fellow-countrymen who swarm in our streets', young Italians would often entertain assembled crowds in London and earn a better wage as a busker in England than a labourer in Italy. The Italian musicians were much admired in Victorian England, Thomson and Smith offer: 'There is an element of romance about the swarthy Italian youth to which the English poor cannot aspire'

Boatmen on the River Thames who were known to work on the 'silent highway'. The authors note: 'These men are rough and poorly educated... Never stationary in anyone place, it is difficult for them to secure education for their children, and regular attendance at school would be impossible unless the child left its parents altogether.' The men above right are labourers in the service of Mr Dickson, 'the well-known florist'. They are among 2,000 men employed to distribute flowers to their various purchasers. Only a small proportion are seen at Covent Garden during the daytime; it is in the early morning that they congregate

Pictured here on the right, 'Hookey Alf' - formerly Ted Coally - is a sad tale of poor fortune. Growing up in a prosperous household, he attained an apprenticeship working for the brewery house where his father also worked. A workplace accident saw him fall from height and injure his head, resulting in random epileptic fits,  causing the brewery to let him go. Unable to qualify for any academic tasks, Hokkey Alf began work as a coal porter and thrived. Alas, another accident saw him fall from a ladder and shatter his left arm and right wrist. He injured himself so badly that his left arm had to be amputated. He was once again left without work and unable to fend for his family. He was often found outside the pub waiting for occasional chores to pop up to allow him to earn a few pennies. The authors lament the plight of the child in the middle of the photograph. Smith writes: 'There is no sight to be seen in the streets of London more pathetic than this oft-repeated story the little child leading home a drunken parent'

A street doctor displays his wares. Eighty years before the birth of the NHS, healthcare was an unaffordable dream for London's poorer residents. Faced with no other option, many of the penniless sick could only afford the services of quack doctors who sold their products on the streets. Not surprisingly, the 'cures' seldom worked. The 'street doctor' in this photo lost his job as a driver due to a degenerative eye disease. After spending months in hospitals, he met a man selling ointment that led to his eyesight gradually returning. The ointment seller set the man up in business. The man, who is pictured wearing a built-up shoe, told Thomson and Smith: 'I had no money, but he gave me everything on trust. It was a good thing for both of us, because I was a sort of standing advertisement for him and for myself'

Two men are pictured working at the docks on the river of London. A huge factory looms over the duo in the background as they stand on the dock surrounded by barrels, rope and wood. 

An image of a French 'ticket painter' who designed and painted posters adjourning the streets of London

This image shows a family at their caravan in Battersea, London. Two children sit inside the caravan looking out at the scene, while a group of adults sit on the ground together. 

An image of three men outside the 'working wall'. 'In this instance, the boards covered with thin bills are supplied to Cannon [seated on the right], who hands them up in the morning and received about a shilling weekly for each board,' 

The exact date of this picture of Buckingham Palace isn't known, but the book explains that it must have been taken before 1911, because that was the year that the Queen Victoria Memorial was erected in front of the palace, and it's not visible in the shot. The image shows the East Wing of the palace with its original facade, designed by Edward Blore in 1847. The book says of the palace's early appearance: 'It had previously resembled a fortress or castle constructed out of soft creamy-yellow Caen stone, which quickly darkened and deteriorated in the pollution of the city. It had become brown. The brown was mournful rather than decorative.' In 1913 the decision was taken to renew the facade, the book reveals. Its current facade - designed by the architect Aston Webb - is made from Portland Stone, transforming a 'rather dour and dilapidated structure into a bright and brilliant new creation'. 'The white facade of the East Wing is known throughout the country and the world,' Ackroyd adds

TOP: This colourised picture was snared in 1875 by Alfred and John Bool of the Society for Photographing Relics of Old London. Ackroyd explains that it shows The Oxford Arms on Warwick Lane, 'one of the last surviving galleried coaching inns in London'. Speaking of the colours of London's architecture at that time, specifically the houses of the wealthier classes, Ackroyd says: 'The houses of the late 19th century might seem to be the colour of sepia or russet verging on rust red, with brown or green doorways, while the backs of houses tended to modulate between all the varieties of grey and brown brick.' He notes that the 'houses of the poor', meanwhile, were 'slums or tenements, obscure and brown as mud'. 'It was a world of brown dilapidation,' he declares. BOTTOM: This photograph shows the interior of the Crystal Palace in Hyde Park during the Great Exhibition - an 1851 showcase of 100,000 exhibits from countries around the world, from mechanical inventions to sculptures. Touching on the Crystal Palace's construction, Ackroyd says that 'glass had never been employed on so large a scale, stretching over some 226 hectares (560 acres)'. According to the tome, the glass structure reflected the 'light of the sun as never before seen in London'. The Great Exhibition was 'in some respects a multi-coloured extravaganza' with 'colour everywhere', from blue and white paint on the exterior to strips of red, white and blue in the interior. The author says: 'The Crystal Palace resembled a magic lantern that burned as brightly as the day... it astonished and eventually changed architectural taste.' The Crystal Palace was subsequently moved to Sydenham, 'where in 1936 it was destroyed by fire'

This photograph of St Paul’s Cathedral was captured from the South Bank of the River Thames in around 1875. Discussing the colour of the river, Ackroyd notes that the Thames has been 'generally depicted' as blue on maps of the city, 'when in truth it has a hundred different hues'. In paintings of the late 19th and 20th centuries 'it is predominantly grey, silver or brown' with 'glimpses or slivers' of the blue, he says. Looking to contemporary times, the author says that today, the Thames is 'continually illuminated' thanks to the 'street lights and the light blazing in innumerable adjacent buildings'

This picture of Covent Garden Underground station winds the clock back to around 1927. Ackroyd says: 'The greenest or the most intense green spot in London was the fruit and vegetable market of Covent Garden.' Touching on the history of the market, the book says that in the early 1700s, shops were set up in two rows in the area. This market expanded in the middle of the 19th century, selling vegetables, fruit and flowers. 'It became the most famous market in England,' the book reveals. Today, the 'bustle of the old trades has gone from Covent Garden but the spirit of the market survives in the new life of the piazza where the street musicians, jugglers, acrobats, as well as the shops and restaurants of the present consumer period, still thrive' 

A rainy day on Fleet Street in October 1915 is depicted in this picture. Discussing the presence of advertising on the streets of London, Ackroyd writes that by the middle of the 19th century, London's business premises had 'a variety of papier-mache ornaments or paintings to denote the trade of the occupant'. 'Many coffee houses had a symbol of a loaf and cheese together with a cup... the destruction of Pompeii seemed a fitting advertisement for a patent cockroach exterminator,' the book says. By the end of the 19th century, the ground-floor shops of the city provided 'bursts of colour and variety' with their signs 

This striking colourised picture depicts the London floods of January 1928, when the Thames' tide 'peaked at its highest recorded level of 5.5m (18ft)' and 'parts of central London resembled Venice'. The book notes that the basement of the Tate Gallery was flooded to a depth of 2.4m (eight feet); some 'important paintings', including artworks by JMW Turner, were submerged. The area of Millbank was 'so badly affected that it had to be rebuilt; the old dwellings and warehouses were washed away or damaged beyond repair' and the moat around the Tower of London was 'filled for the first time in eight decades'. The book notes that there were several fatalities and altogether some 4,000 Londoners were rendered homeless in the tragedy 

Westminster Abbey: Founded in 960, it is one of the United Kingdom's most notable religious buildings and the traditional place of coronation and burial site for English and, later, British monarchs

Windsor Castle: The home of the Queen. The original castle was built in the 11th century after the Norman invasion of England by William the Conqueror

Top: Trafalgar Square and National Gallery. Bottom: St. Paul's Cathedral sitting on Ludgate Hill at the highest point of the City of London

King's College, Cambridge: King's was founded in 1441 by Henry VI, soon after he had founded its sister college in Eton

Roman Baths in Bath: The city became a spa with the Latin name Aquæ Sulis ('the waters of Sulis') c. AD 60 when the Romans built baths and a temple in the valley of the River Avon

Christ Church College, Oxford: Christ Church has produced thirteen British prime ministers, more than any other Oxbridge college

The British Museum: The British Museum was established in 1753, largely based on the collections of the physician and scientist Sir Hans Sloane

Kensington Gardens: The gardens are shared by the City of Westminster and the Royal Borough of Kensington and Chelsea and sit immediately to the west of Hyde Park, in western central London

Girton College, Cambridge: The college three miles from the town centre used to be girls' only but is now co-educational

Remastered footage from Victorian Britain was shared in a 90-minute documentary - including Annie Oakley demonstrating Thomas Edison's new camera. Pictured: A portrait of sharpshooter Annie Oakley holding a shotgun, mid 1880s

Annie was the inspiration for the musical Annie Get Your Gun

Footage of a woman slowly undressing (pictured) features in the documentary, despite Victorians having a reputation as prudes

This scene from a minute-long silent film made in 1899 by Yorkshire firm Bamforth & Co, is one of the first kisses seen on British screens

A Northern Union game between Yorkshire’s Dewsbury and Manningham captured in 1901, is believed to be the first time rugby was filmed 

Sagar Mitchell and James Kenyon, who set up Mitchell & Kenyon in 1897, specialised in local scenes such as the Dewsbury Fire Brigade

Footage from 1900 shows a group of young boys playing an intricate game of leapfrog called Mounty Kitty

Another remastered film shows passengers embarking on the Cunard Lucania, which offered different experiences depending on the class they had paid for