Personal Histories III

Enchanting Histories

Tracing personal histories is certainly addictive. When you know someone has worked in the same place, sat at the same table, worn away the same steps, and made friendships in the same place as you, learning about these people of the past becomes enchanting.
Today's personal histories blog is about Minnie Cassandra Lovegrove.

Lovegrove Family Tree

Minnie was born in January 1894 to William Roland Lovegrove (b. 1865, Chaddesden, Derby - d. 1903), and Martha Emma Lovegrove, née Wibberly (b. 1871, d. April 1894).
Minnie lost her mother at only 4 months old, and was brought up by her grandparents, William and Emma Lovegrove, and her father William Roland Lovegrove.
William Lovegrove was a Railway Engine Driver in 1881, and his son William R. was a machine apprentice. They lived on Bloomfield Street (off London Road) in Derby. By 1891 William R. is listed as a soldier in the Royal Marine Light Infantry: Chatham Division (enlistment date 11 July 1882). He must have left in late 1891 or early 1892, as he joins the Midland Railway in Derby in May 1892 as a 'Caller-up'. We're not sure what this occupation is - there is some thought that it is another term for 'knocker-up', or perhaps a 'Caller-off/caller-out who "Loads and unloads trucks in a goods  depot; calls out particulars of incoming and outgoing consignments, from  labels on goods, to goods checkers in preparation for their removal  from platform or wagon by goods porters."

Shortly thereafter, in 1893, William R. marries Martha Wibberly, and Minnie is born the following year. Martha dies the same year and Minnie next shows up in the 1901 census.

Borough Isolation Hospital Derby

In the 1901 census, Minnie is listed (age 7) as a patient at the Borough Isolation Hospital. The address of the hospital is Mansfield Road, Derby. It was also known as Derby Borough Infectious Hospital, and the Derwent Hospital. The hospital no longer exists but was in the area now known as Hampshire Road. It was opened as an isolation Hospital in 1883, and closed in 1985-6, when housing was built n the land.

You can see photos of the hospital on Flickr and Picture the Past.

In the 1911 census Minnie and her grandmother are living as lodgers at 39 Grange Street Derby. By this time Minnie has lost her mother, father, and grandfather (who both died in 1903*). Later that year, aged 17, Minnie starts work at W. W. Winter Photographers.

We can see from the wages ledger that she takes over from Nellie Manning:

She clearly has bouts of poor health though as illness is listed under her wages on several occasions.

She eventually leaves in February 1914, although she must spend some time in a sanatorium in 1913 as she is referred to in some of the letters (as Cassie) that Bernard Sheppard wrote to William Henry King.
In a letter dated September 15 1913, Sheppard writes, "Miss Lovegrove is out of the sanatorium again. She came in on Friday evening. She looks a big rosy faced country lass compared with what she was before, and has gained about a stone in weight. Can't say when she will return here yet - got to see the medical advisers first."
Just three days later Sheppard writes in another letter to King, "Cassie had left the premises only half an hour before he came in. She had had a bad coughing bout the night before, and seemed a bit low spirited in consequence. Am afraid that poor kid 'aint going to be patched up to mean anything after all."
Sadly Minnie dies in 1914 aged just 20.

While Minnie doesn't have any offspring she does have a number of relatives via various aunts and uncles, and we are hoping to find a possible living relative through these.
Names we are looking for include: George E. Lovegrove; Harry R. Lovegrove; Velsha M. Lovegrove; Florence, Margaret and Jean Sands; and Doris M. Weston, who would all have been cousins of Minnie. Get in touch if you think you might be related!
Email: office@wwwinter.co.uk
Facebook: @WWWinterLtd


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*The Midland Railway ledgers show William R. has several periods of illness from January to May 1897, November 1902 to March 1903, and finally leaving in August 1903.

In the Papers!

We have been excited and grateful to receive some local and national press coverage over the FORMAT17 Festival.
The Derby Telegraph have been supportive as always, as have BBC East Midlands. You can see one of our images on BBC Local Live with Gavin Bevis  (14:54, 7 Feb) , and there is a lovely piece on their news website covering the Derby Museums exhibition.

We have particularly had some lovely feedback from the Guardian article. A gentleman from France has been in touch to identify his Great Uncle from the Tickner photograph, and a lady from Spain has recognised her grandfather, Alf Goodere, from the newsagents.

We also spotted a new entry for W. W. Winter on Wikipedia quoting the Guardian article which was a typo. Winters was not in fact founded in 1865, and we can now confirm from a notice in the Derbyshire Advertiser and Journal that the original date for the business was 1852! This allows us to firmly place Winters as the longest continuously running photography studio in the world.
You can see a copy of the clipping from 31 March 1863 on our website

Last but not least, we came across this lovely blog post from 2014, 'My Great Aunt Norah's wartime diaries, 1938-1948' featuring a Winters portrait of a young woman - a great read for anyone interest in family history.

Researching Antiques

What is it?

Sometimes the first question we have to ask when we uncover something new in the building is, 'What is it?'

Some designs haven't changed much over the years and so it is easy to recognise an old tripod or a film canister. Other times it's not as obvious.
This is our latest find:

We think we have it the right way up as there are castors still attached on one side. You can see the other set of castors on the floor which are made of iron.

Here it is close up:

E. & H. T. Anthony & Co.
Embossed on the iron is E. & H. T. Anthony & Co. / New York. The company ran from 1862 to 1902 when it merged with the Scovill and Adams Company and became Ansco. E. & H. T. Anthony & Company was the largest supplier and distributors of photographic supplies in the United States during the 19th century (see Wikipedia).
You can see a catalogue of their equipment online here but nothing matches up to the piece above.

Our best guess is an easel probably used for enlarging prints by mural printing. We're not, however, entirely confident in this and would love some help in identifying its use.
Some detailed images might help!

The hooks running down the edges are locked in place and there is a bracket on top of each side. We are assuming the sides would be joined together. There are cogs and teeth and a sort of keyhole cover too:

 

If you have any ideas please share them. It would be a great restoration project for us.

Thank you!

Comment or email us on office@wwwinter.co.uk

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Historical Photos for the Home

As we get more and more interest in the historical images owned by Winters we have decided to make some of the images available to buy online via our website. We are just dipping our toe in the water at the moment but hope to expand the collection if there is the demand.

We have chosen some of our favourite; beautiful images in themselves, and places that will resonate with Derby locals.

Longing for lazy days in the sunshine we have selected Regatta on the River Derwent dated 1907. There is a lovely idylic quality to the image with the soft haze and ripples on the river.

For those with Derby connections, we had to include Iron Gate Derby and the iconic view up the hill to the Cathedral with its 16th century tower.

And my personal favourite, The Hollow, Littleover. Remember when we used to have real snow and everything felt peaceful?

We hope these images make you feel as magical as they do for us!

We are offering them for sale fully framed with a crystal (almost invisible) laminate finish so you wont have to worry about reflections of glass. P&P is included for UK mainland but just contact us if you would like shipping further afield!

James Bond Cameras

Miniature Cameras

Okay, so not actually James Bond's cameras but take a look at the fantastic miniature 'spy' cameras in the Winters / Cameron collection!

V P Twin Camera

The largest of the cameras above is the VP Twin camera, origianlly launched in 1935 and relaunched in 1952. It was manufactured by W. Elliott Ltd in Birmingham, UK; and its body is made of Bakelite. It took 127 film producing sixteen 5/8" x 1¼" exposures. Small enough to fit in a top pocket!
The next size up on the image above, is the Sida Geesellschaft fur photographische Apparate m.b.H., Berlin, Germany. It shot 25x25mm images onto paper-backed 32mm "Sida" rollfilm.

'Super Snaps' Flicker

The Supasnaps Flicker was a 6cm miniature camera dating from the 1980's. Made of injection moulded
polystyrene that took a 110 cartridge film it was suitable for keeping on a keyring and was part of the modern generation of pocket cameras that took over from subminiatures.

Mycro IIIA

We've saved the best 'til last; The Mycro IIIA subminiature was last in the Mycro line and was produced in Japan for export only. You can see just how small it was here against a 50 pence piece. It used 17.5mm paper backed rollfilm with early versions producing 10×14mm exposures and later ones producing a sqiare 14×14mm exposure. The camera came with a leather case, and has a cable release attachment.

We think everyone should have one!

Volunteers Blog - Daryl

Hello, I'm Daryl one of the Heritage Project volunteers.  Having recently been on the blogging workshop, offered to us by the Winter's Heritage Project, I thought I'd take the plunge and tell you about my experience of my half day conservation sessions at Winters.

I had done my half day of glass negative conservation a few weeks ago, but I was lucky enough to have the opportunity to volunteer for a second half day yesterday.

Being the second time (third if you count the Open Day) that I had been behind the scenes at W W Winter I felt a bit more at home.

I was working again with another volunteer that I had met at the Conservation Workshop in January which helped.  We had also been on the previous cleaning session together and at the blogging workshop.

We were directed to a back room on this occasion to address some 12 inch by 10 inch glass negatives.  Previously I had worked in the newly refurbished room on 3 inch by 4 inch negatives.  On that previous occasion we had not managed to process very many as it was our first visit, but this time we got through quite a few more.

During a break Louisa showed us some images from larger negatives that she had digitised by taking digital photos of them.  Unfortunately many of them were beyond recovery, but not all.  The images often of only part of the original were fascinating.  Although I have to admit to being more interested in the machines and buildings than the people, but that's just me.

There was a great image of what seemed to be a Foden Steam Lorry; our cursory web search suggested that it would have been between 1906 and 1911, over one hundred years ago !  Unfortunately our web search turned up nothing about the company painted on the lorry door "Spa".  The lorry was loaded with what looked to me like wooden crates which could have been beer or pop or could it have been "mineral water".  Was there a market for mineral water 100 years ago ?  I don't know, but I'm sure someone out there will :D

Back at the job we were there to do we cleaned and stored some images of Repton School Hockey Team, several wedding images, a couple of a workshop with belt driven lathes in operation and a company motor coach outing.

It was all over very quickly and since we are almost at the end of the first phase there were no further scheduled conservation sessions available.  I will have to wait and see what the next phase brings.

*Editors Note: We found a few Spa~Water bottles in the glass hole in the cellar. Spa-Tona (formerly Spa-Iron Brew) was a drink produced by Burrows & Sturgess of Derby. Hubert thinks we did commercial photography for them - hence the 'still full' bottles seen in this photo!

Support from HLF East Midlands

The Heritage Lottery Funded Volunteer Room

Winter's used to have a suite of darkrooms running across the back of the building. With the advent of digital photography and imaging, these wet processing rooms fell out of use. The colour darkroom was set up in Mr Winter's old private office. Being a dark room we didn't see it much but this is what it ended up looking like:

Over a period of four months the layers have been laboriously peeled back, and restored to a workable office space for our HLF project volunteers. The insulation had to be stripped off the walls which revealed the old fire place, sash windows, and a secret doorway!

Once this was done, we were able to rebuild the room back from the bare-brick. Our builder, Jason Toon, worked hard to create the perfect finish:

All this labour that has been going on in the background means that these specially trained volunteers...

 ...can use this room....

 ...to turn these...

...into this!

Follow our blog to keep up-to-date as we scan and publish more images!

Photo Heritage Evidence

FORMAT Festival 2015 is up and running!

There are two ways to access Winter's archive during Derby's international photography festival:

Artist Debbie Cooper has produced a beautiful exhibition using images from large format old glass plate negatives discovered in Winter's cellar.

Sneak preview of the @formatfestival greenhouse from my @WWWinterLtd residency funded by @ace_midlands pic.twitter.com/lFL4HQ3gLL
— debbie adele cooper (@debbie_cooper) March 8, 2015

Inspired by the war time practice of recycling glass from negatives to build green houses, Debbie has re-imagined an architectural space in the form of a hexagonal glass house printed with portaits from Winter's.
The sense of light brings these images to life in a very personal way. Photography allows us to observe the face intensely without fear of social embarrassment, and gives us the space to reflect, 'who is this anonymous person / who am I?', letting our imaginations grow.

Tours* around the Winter's studio allow the public to further investigate the most important part of Derby's heritage; its people.

On display around the studio are many portraits spanning the history of the business over the last 150 years, as well as cameras and lenses. The original daylight retouching studio will be open to view, and take a turn around the large photo studio to see some of the old hand painted backdrops and props.

*Book your tour place via the Quad box office, and browse the FORMAT festival website for all the exiting events and exhibitions over the coming weeks. We look forward to seeing you!

A Rather Fabulous Foursome

Who are these handsome lads and lasses? Who indeed!

We may not know who they are or what they did but they have one thing in common for certain - they were all photographed at W. W. Winter Photographer's in Derby, on quarter plate glass negatives, most likely in the late 1940's.

How do we know?

There's a rather fabulous project going on at W. W. Winter's at the moment. We have our very own Artist in Residence. Debbie Adele Cooper has been combing our archive, delicately scanning these old glass negatives to reveal a myriad wonderful faces. Her research has taken her back through traditional darkroom printing and now onto vintage photography techniques.

Get involved and have your photo taken!

The rediscovery of these lost faces reminds us of our personal histories and the traces we leave... perhaps the above sitters had families in Derby. Maybe their offspring are living here today. Do you look like one of the people in the portraits that Debbie has revealed? Then she wants to hear from you now!

You don't have to be related to the people in the pictures, just have a resemblance to the original, and a link to Derby yourself.

Take a look at the DerbyAnon website - new images are still being added.

Follow the project on Twitter and Instagram via @archive_artist

Contact Debbie via email through info@debbiecooper.org

We look forward to seeing you in the studio and finding out whose face you fit!