A new book from National Trust reveals unique moments in time
WORDS: CLAIRE SAUL
Churchill And Friend
There’s no mistaking the identity of the gentlemen to the right of this candid 1929 shot. It is the future prime minister Winston Churchill chatting to his close friend Frederick Edwin Smith who died the following year.
When the Churchill family home, Chartwell, was first opened to the public, his widow Lady Churchill chose this shot as one of several to go on display representing her late husband’s life.
nationaltrust.org.uk/chartwell
Compassion
Volunteers Edith Teresa Hulton and Mabel Campbell serve refreshments to wounded First World War soldiers arriving by train. They had responded to requests for nurses to work as part of the war effort and found themselves working with the Red Cross, perilously close to the front line in Italy.
Venice-born Edith, whose fluent Italian proved very helpful to her British colleagues, also used to work nursing hospital patients and transporting supplies. Formal recognition for her voluntary work, the Croce di Guerra medal, along with some elements of her Red Cross uniform, are among the collection at Attingham Park in Shropshire, which later became her home. nationaltrust.org.uk/attingham-park
Women At Work
These fisherwomen are collecting limpets, known as “flithers”, from the rugged and muddy shores of the Yorkshire coast, for fishermen to use as bait. Known as “flither pickers”, they were photographed in the 1880s by Frank Meadow Sutcliffe, who commented that their “work by daylight is even harder than the fisherman’s toil”.
Working under very different conditions 50 years later are the ladies packing Cream Crackers at a Jacob’s Bakery factory. Photographer Edward Chambré Hardman’s shot conveys calmness and uniformity as the ladies concentrate on their task.
At his Liverpool home, which is open to visitors today, thousands of negatives were stored in large biscuit tins, one of them from Jacob’s.
nationaltrust.org.uk/the-hardmans-house
Love And Affection
Meet Katherine and Charles Ensor, posing for a studio photograph. The photographer placed
