1939: England in Color (part 2)

Hmm reminds me of a peculiar incident which happened to me many years ago. I was cycling up Terrington Bank (between York and Hovingham on the back road) when I came upon a huge roll of hay in the middle of the road. Then another one as I beetled up the 1-in-6 gradient. And another, and then a tractor, a half empty trailer, and (straight out of an Ealing Comedy) two guys scratching their heads and wondering what to do..

Seriously it was lucky that none of the rolls well... rolled, else I woudn't be here to bore you with this un-camera related story. No I didn't have one on me then.

PS pertains to picture 12.

Amazing work! Thanks for sharing!

What film scanner do you use or recommend? I got a lot of old films that need to go digital.

These images would make excellent companions to the relevant chapters of 'In Search of England' by HV Morton, which details in a very readable way his road trip around England in the same period.

This is as good in its own way as "Life and Landscape on the Norfolk Broads." Great scans and great work by your ancestor who captured a country that was never the same after WW2...
"Life and Landscape" was published by photographer Peter Henry Emerson in 1886. He used his camera to capture what was even then a vanishing way of life that depended heavily on horse-, sail-, and human-power.
Good show!

Very impressed by your vivid images of a largely lost world. I found your fascinating pictures because I have just discovered a similar trove of perhaps Agfa transparencies in glass mounts dating from 1937 through to the 1940s. They are taken in various spots around England and some abroad. Unfortunately I don't have the technical knowledge to copy or restore these images. One thing that puzzles me is that when I try to scan them the image appears to be black and white. Yet a camera captures their colour.

Anyhow, very well done on making these pictures available.

In all my years (76 ) I have never seen an old colour photograph of the Lincoln Brayford Pool with so much detail,I think it must be a rarity.
I walked on the same waterfront during the second world war and worked on it in the 1950s so remember it very well.The pub on the left still exists,the bridge near the boats was a hand operated swing bridge,and the red cart was the property of the adjacent C.S.Dickinson Mill.
Thank you for reviving many old memories.

What super pictures, I live in Lincolnshire, the photos of Boston and Lincoln are most interesting. Believe it or not, I drive a 1937 Morris 8 although it is a saloon, and crossed the bridge next to Brayford Pool, where the photo no.8 was taken from only last weekend on a rail excursion pulled by LMS Jubilee "Galatea" Steam locomotive built I believe in 1936!

Thank you so much for sharing these wonderful photos Barney. The image of the church with the pink thatched cottages is definitely Cavendish Church in Suffolk and the view hasn't changed at all - the cottages are still pink and thatched. Thanks again, so wonderfully evocative.

picture no.2 of the car in the foreground and the house in the background and the marsh further back looks like the house on the hill before entering Blakeney in North Norfolk. Also the horse & cart looks like The Greenway Stiffkey, the marsh is at the end of the road. The road turns to the right to the Anti Aircraft Training Camp .
Lovely pictures, thanks

Little did they know that their seemingly irrelevant excursion would one day be shared world wide. Stunning.

Not sure how many folk know of the photographic history within pic 15. The survey ship Discovery was moored in this position for many years. On the opposite bank of the river were the publishers of Amateur Photographer, reputedly the longest-running continually published photographic title in the world.

For decades, the staff of AP used the Discovery as one of their test images for all new camera & lens reviews. Certainly through the '50's & '60's I became deeply aware of all of the rigging features of the ship, as seen using a variety of new hot technologies of the day ......

These are very interesting photos. Enjoyed them very much. Thank you for sharing them with us. My husband Ted is British, he enjoyed them too. He lived in Lincolnshire for a few years. His daughter still lives in Lincolnshire.

A wonderful set of photos.

How lovely were the Norfolk and Lincolnshire scenes; these must still be relatively 'undiscovered' parts of England (well, just..). I recently traveled through these counties visiting some old Bomber Command airfields (Binbrook, Metherington, etc etc) as many Australians still do to visit the last places where relatives served in the RAAF/RAF.

There's a great feeling of nostalgia; with hindsight we know the war was imminent and many things were about to change.

And not an execrable wind "farm" in sight to blight and vandalise the landscapes for no good reason.

These are great to see. Do you by chance know what camera was used used? My brother recently scanned all of my Dad's old war photos from his WW2 service in CIB theatre of operations. When viewing many of his my brother then compared them to more recent pics I have taken in Mumbai and Delhi and he found it interesting to see how similar our scene setting was in the photos we took separated by 60 years, plus how little things have changed.

Thank you! I enjoyed this very much.

Image 5 - A steeply sloping street somewhere in England with the hat lady is Prentice Street in Lavenham.

https://www.google.co.uk/maps/@52.109625,0.797735,3a,75y,33.18h,80.81t/data=!3m4!1e1!3m2!1snYVyUHWmRT8qWtSyhbqIaw!2e0?hl=en

Counter intuitively the houses look older now than they do in the photograph due to "restoration". Pebble dash removal, timber exposed, old hall houses converted back from multiple to single dwellings.

Thank you for the wonderful series.

Thanks for posting these great images, the ship in slide 15 of Series 2 must be RRS Discovery, now in Dundee. She was moored at the Embankment until 1986.

Thank you so much for posting these, I love this stuff. My own family collection is 20 years after this and am in the process of scanning them - but most are BW and i do wish my mother had been able to afford a better camera than the box brownie

As somebody who can just remember 1939 England I have found these pictures and commentary very interesting. I have scanned some of my families old b & w photos and combined them with a Google maps satellite view of the same place to show a before and after in the same print.

Wonderful images - for some reason I keep looking at them.

Here is the current Google Streetview of Image 6 with Lincoln Cathedral in the background.

https://www.google.ca/maps/@53.223469,-0.543651,3a,75y,32.78h,81.31t/data=!3m4!1e1!3m2!1s6SlBXA-6Ea9uItCttD2Y3Q!2e0?hl=en