1907: Photographs of the opening of High Street Bridge, Tunbridge Wells, Kent
Lankester, Percy :
Souvenir of the Opening of High Street Bridge, Tunbridge Wells, May 16th, 1907.
Tunbridge Wells: Lankester, 1907.
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5 x 6.5 inches, 13 x 16 cms. 10 original photographs, captioned in the negative, laid down on thick brown card, deckle edged, lettered in white on the front cover, and held with a ribbon tie.
Well preserved and unmarked.
"Lankester, Tunbridge Wells", the publisher of this work, is almost certainly "Percy Lankester", of Old Hall Studio, Tunbridge Wells, who exhibited regularly between 1891 and 1902 at the Royal Photographic Society's annual exhibitions. Hastings
Reference Library holds a copy of the same photographer's "Pevensey historical pageant ... Pevensey Castle, July 20 to 25, 1908 : official souvenir", whilst Tunbridge Wells Museum and Art Gallery displays his 1892 photographic study of "Donkey Boys".
Beyond those brief mentions, however, nothing further can be found of the photographer's output. Certainly a search through the holdings of all Britain's major libraries including the British Library fails to find any other examples of his work. In
particular this "Souvenir of the Opening of High Street Bridge" appears to be unrecorded elsewhere.
In brief, this present copy, whilst perhaps not unique, is almost certainly one of very few still in existence and it is entirely possible that the photographs it contains are unpublished elsewhere.
An important and virtually irreplaceable item of great local history interest.
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