Researcher Phil Nichols guides us through a new collection of photographs of Somerset.
The Sydney Vaux Photographic Collection
A wonderful collection of photographs of village life in the early 20th century was discovered recently – in a pair of old suitcases in a barn 70 miles from the village they came from.
The owner knew that the suitcases contained glass plate negatives, but he had thought that they were unsold stock from the antiques business of a Somerset man called William Vaux. A local researcher, Phil Nichols, tracked them down while he was researching William’s father, Sydney. Sydney Vaux was a keen amateur photographer, based in the south Somerset village of Seavington St Mary. And so it came to pass that Phil discovered that these mysterious suitcases held nearly 700 photographs taken by Sydney, still in their original packaging. A quick inspection showed that the photographs were taken in the Seavingtons (St Mary and St Michael), mostly in the period 1905-1915.
Identifying the Negatives
Once the owner agreed to the long-term loan of the collection to Somerset Archives and Local Studies, the glass negatives were carefully transported back to Somerset. A positive image was made of each of the 675 negatives, and work could start on identifying them.
Phil was able to recruit two very knowledgeable residents of Seavington St Mary. Between them, they have identified the location of two-thirds of the photographs, and can name about a third of the people in the photographs. One of the volunteers has found photographs of three generations of her family, and the other volunteer found a photograph showing her house being built.
A Somerset Treasure Trove
There are many photographs of the Friendly Society Club Day walk, and others of meetings of the Seavington Harriers, weddings, plays, fêtes, and the schoolchildren. There are also some excellent farming scenes (including haymaking and shearing), and photographs taken at many of the farms, large houses, cottages and countryside scenes in the two villages, as well as the churches.
The Vaux family’s wheelwright and carpentry business is well represented, along with thatchers, builders, road repairers, and gamekeepers – a good slice of country life. There are many portraits of village residents, mostly taken at the front porch of Jubilee Cottage, Seavington St Mary, the Vaux family home.
Thanks to Our Volunteers
The work of the volunteers has been used extensively to write the first archive catalogue for the collection, and the digitised photographs can be viewed on the computers in the searchroom at the Somerset Heritage Centre. The next stage of the work is to clean and re-package the negatives, and to produce very high-resolution digital copies for long-term archival use.
A Talk about the Collection
If you would like to know more about the collection, there will be a free talk at Seavington Millennium Hall at 7.30pm on Friday 7 October 2022.
Browse the Library
Some of Sydney Vaux’s photographs have been published in Victorian and Edwardian Somerset from old photographs, by David Bromwich and Robert Dunning (Batsford, 1977) and Robert Dunning’s Victorian & Edwardian Somerset (Amberley, 2008). Copies of both of these books can be read at the Somerset Heritage Centre. Some also appear in the Seavington Web Museum.
