Photographic Archive
In August 1999 the owner of a cottage in Whitehill needed to do some repairs and lifted the floorboards of his sitting room. He discovered that in the space underneath there were huge numbers of glass photographic plates, many of them broken, but none-the-less over 2,000 of them were undamaged. On investigation it was discovered that the cottage had been owned from about 1907 to 1915 by Louis Hayward, a photographer. Basil Smith and Chris Wain first obtained a small grant from Whitehill Town Council for cleaning the plates. It then became apparent that there were more plates than anticipated and so further grants were obtained from Awards for All of £4,500 and £500 from EHDC. All the plates could then be cleaned, wrapped in conservation paper, numbered and contact prints taken. The grants also enabled an exhibition of the prints and an associated play to be performed over the weekend of 30th June/1st July 2000 as part of the Millennium celebrations of the town.
Louis Hayward had taken many photographs of the Edwardian civilians and soldiers, together with a few local pictures of shops and roads in Bordon and Whitehill. He also experimented with collages, where the subject was photographed in the studio and then placed on a cut-out of a horse with a suitable background. This technique was also extended to the new wonder of the age – the biplane. A selection of these can be viewed on the HCC Record Centre website.
A selection of the plates held at the Hampshire Record Office
with permission to publish from the Office
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If anyone recognises any of the people or places, we should be very happy to hear.
