Harry Bartholomew - village photographer
Harry Bartholomew, age unknown.
For over 40 years, Harry Bartholomew plied his trade as a photographer from the house now numbered 35 on The High Street. He travelled extensively all over the county to find customers, and many examples of his photographic work have survived to this very day.
Born in New Bradwell in 1862 to Henry Andrew Bartholomew and Jane Elizabeth Kemp. His father was a master blacksmith and in the fulness of time Harry would likely have expected to follow in his footsteps, but in 1871 Henry tragically passed away, when Harry was just nine. This left his widow with three children to raise; Harry, his younger brother Alfred and a sister Elizabeth, who was just four.
At the time of Henry’s death, the family were living in the village of Haversham; Henry was buried there on April 25th, but what happened to his family in the immediate aftermath of his death is unknown. However, in 1881 we find 19-year-old Harry in Brixton, London, working as an assistant grocer. Exactly when he went to London (likely as an apprentice), and how and when he made the leap from grocer to photographer is an intriguing mystery, but how he came to be in Great Linford is much easier to explain.
Born in New Bradwell in 1862 to Henry Andrew Bartholomew and Jane Elizabeth Kemp. His father was a master blacksmith and in the fulness of time Harry would likely have expected to follow in his footsteps, but in 1871 Henry tragically passed away, when Harry was just nine. This left his widow with three children to raise; Harry, his younger brother Alfred and a sister Elizabeth, who was just four.
At the time of Henry’s death, the family were living in the village of Haversham; Henry was buried there on April 25th, but what happened to his family in the immediate aftermath of his death is unknown. However, in 1881 we find 19-year-old Harry in Brixton, London, working as an assistant grocer. Exactly when he went to London (likely as an apprentice), and how and when he made the leap from grocer to photographer is an intriguing mystery, but how he came to be in Great Linford is much easier to explain.
His mother Jane had been born in Great Linford in 1829; her father Thomas had for a time been the landlord of the Wharf Inn, and after his passing, the license passed to her. However, this was to be a brief state of affairs, at least on paper, as upon remarrying to a David Walters, also of Great Linford, the license was subsequently issued in his name. Jane and David had wed at St Andrew’s on September 25th, 1879, but for reasons unknown they appear to have soon after departed the Wharf Inn, though it stayed in the family, as the license was then passed to Jane's brother Christopher.
On the 1881 census, we find Jane living on the High Street with her second husband and her children Alfred and Elizabeth. She would be joined there sometime afterwards by Harry, as by the time of the 1891 census we find him returned from London and established in his step-father’s household as a photographer, though his siblings had since departed; Alfred to marry and raise a family of his own in the village, and Elizabeth to become a housemaid in a large house in Somerset.
It seems Harry had not been long in business at Great Linford, as 1891 is the first year we find him listed in a Trade Directory for the village. Trade Directories were printed volumes issued periodically by various companies, which not only listed inhabitants of cities, towns and villages and their trades, but also sometimes provided an eclectic gazetteer of additional information, including notable burials, the name of the school master, the basic geology of the local soil and what charities were in operation. There seems to be no Trade Directory listing for Harry anywhere else prior to this, which suggests he had started his photography business in Great Linford, rather than relocating it from somewhere else; we can perhaps speculate that he brought the skills with him from London.
Though he was named Harry at birth, it should be observed that he most often went professionally by the name Henry, and indeed ran his business under that name, which with apologies to any Harrys reading this, perhaps sounded a little posher to his clientele. However, to avoid confusion we will stick with Harry for the remainder of this history.
We can push back the date for the start of his business a little further to 1890, as the Northampton Mercury newspaper of October 3rd, reported on a “Comic Cricket Match” played in Great Linford, in which the participants donned humorous costumes and marched through the village accompanied by a band. This must have been a sight to behold, and Harry reportedly took a photograph of the players, but regretfully newspapers had not yet embraced photography, so it was not reproduced and nor has a copy since come to light.
Thanks to several articles carried in the The Wolverton Express Newspaper, we know quite a bit about Harry’s life as a photographer, and indeed, various other side-lines he was engaged in. The first of these articles, published in the June 21st, 1968 edition, came about because a Great Linford resident named Ralph Hall of Wood Farm had walked into the newspaper office bearing with him several boxes of glass photographic plates formally belonging to Harry. The article provides the fascinating detail that Harry had initially travelled on his photographic assignments by horse and trap with, “his cumbersome plate cameras and tripods”, but had later progressed to using a belt-driven motorcycle, which upon reflection, sounds far more precarious. Amazingly, a second article in the Wolverton Express, dated August 9th, 1968, includes a photograph of the bike, reproduced below.
On the 1881 census, we find Jane living on the High Street with her second husband and her children Alfred and Elizabeth. She would be joined there sometime afterwards by Harry, as by the time of the 1891 census we find him returned from London and established in his step-father’s household as a photographer, though his siblings had since departed; Alfred to marry and raise a family of his own in the village, and Elizabeth to become a housemaid in a large house in Somerset.
It seems Harry had not been long in business at Great Linford, as 1891 is the first year we find him listed in a Trade Directory for the village. Trade Directories were printed volumes issued periodically by various companies, which not only listed inhabitants of cities, towns and villages and their trades, but also sometimes provided an eclectic gazetteer of additional information, including notable burials, the name of the school master, the basic geology of the local soil and what charities were in operation. There seems to be no Trade Directory listing for Harry anywhere else prior to this, which suggests he had started his photography business in Great Linford, rather than relocating it from somewhere else; we can perhaps speculate that he brought the skills with him from London.
Though he was named Harry at birth, it should be observed that he most often went professionally by the name Henry, and indeed ran his business under that name, which with apologies to any Harrys reading this, perhaps sounded a little posher to his clientele. However, to avoid confusion we will stick with Harry for the remainder of this history.
We can push back the date for the start of his business a little further to 1890, as the Northampton Mercury newspaper of October 3rd, reported on a “Comic Cricket Match” played in Great Linford, in which the participants donned humorous costumes and marched through the village accompanied by a band. This must have been a sight to behold, and Harry reportedly took a photograph of the players, but regretfully newspapers had not yet embraced photography, so it was not reproduced and nor has a copy since come to light.
Thanks to several articles carried in the The Wolverton Express Newspaper, we know quite a bit about Harry’s life as a photographer, and indeed, various other side-lines he was engaged in. The first of these articles, published in the June 21st, 1968 edition, came about because a Great Linford resident named Ralph Hall of Wood Farm had walked into the newspaper office bearing with him several boxes of glass photographic plates formally belonging to Harry. The article provides the fascinating detail that Harry had initially travelled on his photographic assignments by horse and trap with, “his cumbersome plate cameras and tripods”, but had later progressed to using a belt-driven motorcycle, which upon reflection, sounds far more precarious. Amazingly, a second article in the Wolverton Express, dated August 9th, 1968, includes a photograph of the bike, reproduced below.
The life of a photographer (and his assistant)
The arrival at the newspaper office of the box of photographic plates prompted the newspaper to begin a weekly column reproducing some of Harry's work, and it seems that it was the popularity of this series that led to further discoveries, including the identity of a still living person who had worked for Harry. The article that resulted is reproduced in full below.
The man behind the wooden camera
There has been tremendous interest in our “Do you remember” series of old photographs. Hardly a day goes by that someone does not call at the office with information about one of the pictures, or brings a treasured photograph of their own.
The man directly responsible for refreshing people’s memories and presenting the “Express” with a gold mine of local history, is the late Mr Harry Bartholomew, photographer, Great Linford.
We have already told how we began our series, following the gift by Mr Ralph Hall of a collection of Mr. Bartholomew’s photographic plates.
Several of our informants have told us a little more of Mr. Bartholomew himself. But we had a stroke of luck in finding only a few doors away from our office, a man who was the photographer’s assistant, nearly 60 years ago – Mr Bert Jones, of 107 Church Street.
It was in January 1909 that he first went to work for Harry Bartholomew, the jovial bachelor who lived near the old post office in Great Linford High Street.
He had a studio and dark room in the garden – probably where this self-portrait was taken. (See at the beginning of this article for the picture.)
Bert Jones considered himself lucky getting a job so near home and straight from school. Fifty hours a week for 2s, 6d, with photography taking only a small part of his time.
Harry Bartholomew, beside being an excellent photographer, was also a jack of all trades. The son of a Haversham blacksmith, trained as a grocer, he was an agent for cycles, a picture frame maker, a pig keeper and in the winter months, an odd job man who was quite willing to turn his hand to mending windows.
Mr. Jones began work at 8 am, fed the pigs and caught and groomed the little Welsh pony that took the photographer on his rounds.
He then loaded the trap with his cumbersome equipment. There was the big 12 x 10 camera for portraits, the whole plate and half plate cameras for general work, and the 5 x 4 with its thousandth-of-a-second focal plane shutter for hunting pictures.
In with them went the plate holders and tripods and, for indoor work, the cans of flash powder.
The meets of the Whaddon Chase, the Oakley and the Bucks Otter Hounds were his bread and butter. He regularly attended territorial Army camps, fetes and fairs. He specialised in school groups, choir pictures, village scenes, for more than 20 years faithfully recording the daily life and happening of North Bucks.
If there was a flood or a snowstorm, shortly afterwards postcards of the unfamiliar settings of familiar scenes would be on sale at 2d a time, stamped in the bottom right-hand corner, “Bartholomew, Linford, Newport Pagnell.”
Mr. Jones explained how these postcards came to be printed. Mr Bartholomew would return from his days round, develop his plates, fix them and leave them to dry. Next day he they would be put over special daylight printing-out paper into frames and placed outside on a special bench for a time – according to the strength of the light.
“He was a good bloke to work for,” said Mr. Jones. “If there was not much printing about I used to fill my time in the garden. But if there was a big “do” on he would take me for a ride. When princess Marie Louise visited Newport Pagnell I went along with him.”
After nearly three years Mr. Jones left to enter Wolverton Works. This was in 1911 when Mr. Bartholomew, now the rather timid owner of a Sun belt-driven motor-cycle paid young Bert the princely sum of 5s a week!
Understandably Mr Jones cannot remember much about the Linford photographer after that – what with the Army and a rather hazardous time in Salonika! But his sister recalls that eventually after a long courtship, Mr. Bartholomew married a Miss Athaway of Moulsoe, a keeper’s daughter who had been a teacher at Linford. He died soon after the first world war.
To elaborate a little on the account above, when Harry started out, he would have likely been utilising what was known as the dry plate process of photography, in which a negative image was captured on a glass plate. This had largely superseded the similar wet plate collodion process developed in the 1850s, which had required the photographer to develop his pictures on the spot, meaning that he had to travel with a portable dark room. Dry plate photography, that took off in the 1870s, allowed the photographer to return at his leisure to his dark room and develop his pictures there.
The 1910 tax map for the village does show a building (now demolished) to the rear of number 35 on The High Street in the occupancy of Harry Bartholomew. It seems reasonable to speculate that this was his dark room, or perhaps where he kept the horse, and later his motor-bike.
The 1910 tax map for the village does show a building (now demolished) to the rear of number 35 on The High Street in the occupancy of Harry Bartholomew. It seems reasonable to speculate that this was his dark room, or perhaps where he kept the horse, and later his motor-bike.
From the early 1890s, Harry makes regular appearances in newspaper stories, generally mentioned as the photographer at various social, sporting and official events. He seemed seldom to advertise outside of Trade Directories, and indeed the only newspaper advertisement bearing his name that can be found relates to a cabinet photo of a champion runner named Charles Pearce (known as Little Charlie), copies of which he was selling for 6d each in 1891; larger photographs to include Pearce’s collection of trophies retailed at 1 shilling. Pearce was a resident of Wolverton, and something of a sporting celebrity, having held the record for the four mile grass race. It seems photographs of sporting personalities were popularly collected.
Harry was almost a lifelong bachelor, but as observed in the Wolverton Express article reproduced above, in 1929, at the age of 67, he married Ellen Tryphena Hathaway, 57 years of age. Alas it was to be a short marriage, as Harry passed away in 1934, at the age of 72. Frustratingly, though one might imagine his passing would rate an obituary in a local newspaper, sadly no such notice can be found. His photographs are however a fitting legacy.
Harry was almost a lifelong bachelor, but as observed in the Wolverton Express article reproduced above, in 1929, at the age of 67, he married Ellen Tryphena Hathaway, 57 years of age. Alas it was to be a short marriage, as Harry passed away in 1934, at the age of 72. Frustratingly, though one might imagine his passing would rate an obituary in a local newspaper, sadly no such notice can be found. His photographs are however a fitting legacy.
The photographs of Henry Bartholomew
Here following are just a few of Henry Bartholomew's photographs.
Great Linford Manor House
World War 1 soldiers.
Walton Hall
Unidentified portrait.
The rear of a photograph produced by Harry Bartholomew.
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