| Topic: | More information about the photograph | |
| Posted by: | Krysia Gdaniec | |
| Date/Time: | 06/11/14 10:05:00 |
| I would really be interested to know more about this photo. Who is our local historian now? I think Carolyn Hammond has retired and am not sure who to contact. I saw your post a while ago and realised I had the same postcard tucked away somewhere. I have now found it. It intrigued me and I have never been able to place the location. I bought the picture at an antiques fair in Surrey quite a number of years ago. I will try and post some pictures of the back of the card. It appears to be postmarked Chiswick in Jan and I think the year is 1923. Although, I am still none the wiser about the location shown in the picture. I too think the school was probably located between the top end of Park Road and Park Road North. So could have been a house that was demolished when A4 was constructed or as someone has suggested could be the Gate House on Hogarth Lane as there are similarities. I am also flummoxed by the fencing and the dormer windows in the picture. Everything looks more recent. However the card and the stamp and postmarks all appear genuine. I believe the Photographer is Percy Buchanan The card is marked Photo Tourists Association so I did some more research on this and turned up some interesting facts. I will just copy and paste below the info below Percy Alex Buchanan was born in Lewisham, Kent, in about 1878, the son of Alexander Buchanan, a schoolmaster (1881, 1891, 1901 census). He married Elizabeth Sarah Charlotte Agatha Stackemann, at Turnham Green on 25 October 1902, giving the address of 11 Whitehall Park Road Gunnersbury (Chiswick). At the time he was a commercial traveller but his father in law was Carl Wilhelm (sometimes written Wilhelm Carl) Stackemann, a leading school photographer, who was then running the Photographic Tourists Association from Syringa House, 4 Heathfield Terrace, Chiswick. The Photographic Tourists Association was a photography business that involved photographers touring various districts of England and calling in on schools, workplaces, colleges and other institutions to ask if they could photograph interior and exterior views of the building and take group portraits of pupils, teaching staff, employees, etc. and it would seem likely that Percy worked for them. Cards exist for Queenswood School posted in 1907 produced by the Association - and the information below shows that within a few year Percy Buchanan was producing cards for the school. There is also a 1905 picture of St Edmund's College, Standon, by the Association and Percy later took pictures of this school. However in 1907 Stackemann was declared bankrupt and the business changed hands, continuing at Wandsworth under the management of Tudor Travers Hora. By 1911 W. Stackemann & Co. were based at 13 Elmers Drive, Teddington. There is a detailed history of Stackemann and the Photographic Tourists Association on the Sussex Photohistory web site. A 1907 street directory listed Percy A Buchanan as living at 3 Ellesmere Road, Chiswick, but he is not mentioned in the trade section. He is also listed at this address in the 1908 electoral register. By the time of the 1911 census Percy Buchanan is recorded as a photographer living at 9 Park Road Chiswick, Middlesex, with his wife. It seems likely that Percy set up in business photographing schools at the time of the bankruptcy, and that his cards are unlikely to be dated before 1907, which fits in with the negative numbers so far recorded below. However he may have been the photographer for some of the Stackman cards. In 1913 Percy Alec Buchanan was living at 344 London Road, Thornton Heath, Croydon. When I contacted the genealogist who is putting together a timeline of some of Buchanan’s pictures he told me this about my postcard (my postcard says printed in Belgium which will help when reading the following) “I suspect that the post card you have is later than you think. You say the number is 22859 but there is good evidence that another card of 17950 is of a school which did not open until 1920 or 1921 while a card numbered 31434 cannot be earlier than 1925 or later than 1926. This would suggest that the card of a Chiswick Girls School was taken in about 1923. If the address on the back says it was published by "P. A. Buchanan & Co., Croydon, Surrey" it is definitely after 1914, and the word "Surrey" is missing or if the card states it was "printed in Belgium" it is definitely printed after the First World War.” |