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| St Helier Harbour |
What do retired people do in the day, particular during winter months? Well this one likes to go to historical talks. Every Wednesday at our local Société headquarters, lunchtime talks are held.
So far this month we have learnt about early maps of Jersey, the English colony in Dinan and today a fascinating talk on early photographs of Jersey.
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| Glass Plate |
For nearly ten years, in my youth, I worked at the local newspaper in Jersey. First as a photographic assistant and then as a photographer. It was a full and rewarding time where I learnt much about my adopted home. One of my favourite parts of the job was archiving many of their original photographic glass plates, dating back to the late 19th and early 20th centuries.
In the last few years the Société Jersiaise has incorporated these plates into their ever expanding photographic archive. These plates are being gradually digitised and the results can be viewed online here. Much of this work has been done by archivist Gareth Syvret, and it was Gareth that gave the talk today.
Expecting to hear about the digitised archive he surprised most of the audience by talking about very much earlier photographs of the island, dating back to the 1840's and 1850's. This was before the time of glass plates, when first the processes of Daguerreotype and then Calotype were being used. Calotype superseded Daguerreotype by allowing exposures of only one minute as opposed to an hour. Imagine trying to take a photo of something and having to wait that long before the image would be ready to process. We have come a long way in this digital age of ours.
Some of you may have heard of William Fox Talbot, who invented Calotype. He lived at Lacock abbey near Bath and there is a fabulous museum of his early work there.
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| Caledonia Place, St Helier Harbour |
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| St Helier Harbour |
To get back to the talk, Gareth showed some fabulous early photos of St Helier and the old harbour, from the 1840's. For a historian they reveal so much about a time long gone. Evidence of the names of shops and hotels. Evidence that originally the harbour was much further inland. Now all that space is landfilled and concreted over. Beautiful sailing ships at rest along the quay.
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| Gorey Harbour |
Later he showed images of Gorey Harbour, again from the 1840's before even the arrival of the train.
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| Tower Du Sud |
Many of the early images were produced for the first tourist guides of Jersey. In Souvenir De Jersey by Thomas Sutton in 1854 there is an amazing photo of a long lost Martello tower in St Ouen's Bay. Tower du Sud look like it’s on the verge of collapse; no wonder it’s no longer visible to us today. Health and safety certainly would not have permitted such a structure in today’s world.
Once I returned from the talk, I happily googled the images and found them on this site. You will find many more images and lots more information if you are so inclined.
Do you have a fascination for old photographs and the amazing stories they tell?
Barbara xxx
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