My Town Monday - Part 10

This week I thought I would write a bit about our Fire Brigade, my Dad was a fireman when I was a small child in Bishops Stortford and my maternal grandfather was also a fireman but in London at the time of the second world war during the Blitz.

Bishop's Stortford's first official fire station was built in 1898, is currently occupied by Boots Opticians at No 22 South Street. A private fire brigade had existed in the town prior to this date, but we have to go back to the Roman occupation of Britain to understand the history of fire fighting in the UK.

Like everything the Romans did, fire fighting was an organised business. They first used bands of slaves known as 'Familia Publica' but, for obvious reasons, their less than enthusiastic approach to the task proved ineffective. Citizens' complaints to the authorities were often ignored , but when a quarter of Rome was burned to the ground in 6 AD, the Emperor Augustus took it upon himself to establish a highly trained fire brigade called the 'Corpes of Vigiles'. Their fire fighting methods proved so effective they were used throughout the Roman Empire for the next 400 years, but when the Romans left Britain early in the 5th century they took their skills with them. For the next 1200 years, Britons tackled fires by passing leather buckets hand to hand.

The Saxons gave little thought to fire prevention, or fire fighting, but as most dwellings were built of wood and thatch, laws put in place after the Norman Conquest required that all internal house fires should be extinguished at night-fall. This was usually done by putting a metal cover over the open hearth. The French word for this cover was Couvre Feu, which in Middle English became Curfew. This gave rise to the Curfew Bell that rang in towns and cities long after its original purpose had been forgotten. The only other enforcible fire regulation was that householders should keep a vessel of water outside their front door in summer when the risk of fire was at its highest.



England's biggest conflagration in the Middle Ages was the first fire of London in 1212, in which at least 3000 people died. But even then little effort was put into organised fire fighting. Not until the start of the 17th century did fire regulations require that fire fighting equipment for general use should be kept in the parish church. In the event of a fire, a churchwarden was to assume command and it was he who organised and supervised the bucket passing. They also had hand squirts (pumps that were of little or no use) and firehooks for pulling down buildings to make a firebreak. Unfortunately, such equipment did little to stem the Great Fire of London in 1666. Organisation and fire fighting skills certainly improved after this disasterous event, but there was still no revolutionary device available with which to fight fires.

In 1667, property developer Dr Nicholas Barbon (1640–1698) offered the first fire insurance, and in 1680, to cut the cost of any claims, formed his own fire brigade to extinguish fires at the premises of his policyholders. The company he formed became known as the Phoenix fire office. Others followed his lead and by the 1720s fire insurance was being offered by at least twelve companys, each with their own fire brigade dressed in distinctive colours.

To identify a property covered by insurance, each company would fix its own firemark, made of copper or lead, to the outside of the building. This bore the symbol of the insurance company as well as a policy number.

Fires were attended by any brigade that happened to be in the vicinity when the alarm was raised, but no attempt would be made to put out the fire if the burning premises wasn't insured with their company. Nor would any assistance be given to the brigade who's company it was insured with.

The first effective water pump, introduced to this country in 1721, was based on a pump used in Europe since the late 1600s. Manually operated these pumps were difficult to work, but for a reward of one shilling (5p) members of the public would usually assist with the task. A further inducement to help was free refreshment, each fire engine carrying a large supply of beer for this purpose !!

The first municipal brigade was set up in the city of Edinburgh in 1824 after independent fire brigades inadequately tackled several major fires there. London followed in 1833 when ten insurance companies amalgamated to form one brigade for the capital, called the London Fire Engine Establishment. The brigade continued to be run by insurance companies until it was taken over by the authorities in the mid 1960s.

During the 18th and 19th century, county councils, boroughs and parishes all formed their own fire brigades, backed up by volunteer brigades. Bishop's Stortford's Volunteer Fire Brigade, formed in June 1880, kept two horse-drawn engines at the Engine Station in South Street – a barn-like building that stood opposite the site where the new fire station was built in 1898. The key to this was held at the police station, from which each volunteer's home was connected by electric bell. In 1888 the brigade came under the direct control of the Bishop's Stortford Local Board, who had been in charge of local affairs since 1867. The old Engine Station was later used as a seed merchants shop, but demolished in the 1960s to make way for a Sainsburys supermarket.

In the late 19th century manual pumps were replaced by steam pumps, and they in turn were replaced by motorised engines in the early 1900s. Perhaps through lack of funding, the town's volunteer brigade were still using horse-drawn steam pumps when fire destroyed Anchor Maltings in 1907.


In 1935, volunteer fireman James Hart, licencee of the Royal Oak at Apton Road, was tragically killed when he fell from a new Leyland fire engine being used on a trial run. In his memory a similar engine, known as Firefly, became unique in the fact that it was painted entirely black and operated in Bishop's Stortford between 1935 and 1948.

For the duration of the Second World War the National Fire Service was created to provide for better distribution of men and standardisation of equipment, but in 1947 control reverted back to local authorities. County and county borough brigades replaced autonomous town and village brigades, and Bishop's Stortford's fire service was taken over by the Herts Fire Brigade in 1948.


My dad is the fireman standing in the middle of this photo !!

The fire station where my dad worked was at No 22 South Street.This was later shared with the Ambulance Service, its entrance widened to accommodate both types of emergency vehicle. But with limited space this arrangement proved impracticable and in 1970 the station closed. Both services then moved to a new site at Patmore Road and the county council sold the building in South Street the following year.

Love this one !!

My Town Monday -Part 9

This week I thought that I would write a bit about one of the oldest roads in Bishops Stortford called "Maze Green Road".

The current and only private fee paying school in Bishops Stortford is "Bishops Stortford College" and the college entrance is in Maze Green Road.It is a tree lined road with a grassy area and a popular road to reside in for those with money.

The houses in this road have always been expensive large detached dwellings and the cars parked on the driveways have always been good ones - sadly none of my family have ever lived here !



There are several of the college buildings now in this road including the Bursars house and the headmasters office. The setting is idyllic, academia blending in effortlessly with suburbia.



According to the notes of former town historian J.L. Glasscock , reference to this road first appeared in 1396 when it was called "Mesegrene".

For a long period of time, however, it was more commonly known as "Pest House Lane", the name possibly originating from the 16th century when plague – also known as pestis – struck Bishop’s Stortford.This doesn't sound so posh now !!

The town was visited by the plague on three occasions in all, the first being the bubonic plague in 1349 of which time there are few records. But at the time of its second visit, between June 1582 and March 1583, it is known to have claimed 60 lives in the area.

Those who were ill of plague were segregated and interred a suitable distance away from the town in a building at the top of this road called the Pest House, hence the name Pest house lane.

There are, however, other suggestions for it being named Pest House Lane, but more particularly Maze Green Road, each of which is equally plausible. In medieval England every town had its Pest – or Lazer – or Leper House situated just outside its boundaries. The name for a Leper was 'mezel' (pronounced mazel), and a Leper House would have been called a Lazer House, or Mezel House. By this token, the green at the top of the road may well have been the site of a Leper House and called 'Mezel (or Mazel) Green'.

Another suggestion is that Maze Green Road was named as a direct result of the plague’s first visit to the town in the 14th century – the medieval word ‘maze’ or ‘mazed’ said to be interpreted as a ‘muddled mind’, which was just one of the effects the disease had on people.

It's feasible, therefore, that the green at the top of this road was used as a place of internment for plague victims and named 'Maze' Green for that reason. In fact, both suggestions would tie in with the earliest reference to the road (1396): Mesegrene, as in mezel (pronounced mazel), referring to a Leper House; or Mesegrene, as in Maze Green, referring to the 'mazed' effect the 1349 plague had on its victims.

If this is true, then it would seem the name Pest House Lane originated at the time of the plague's final and most devastating visit to the town. In the wake of the Great Plague that struck London in 1665, it reached Stortford in July 1666 and raged for a full five months.

The church register records 231 related deaths in 1666/67 – at that time one sixth of Bishop’s Stortford’s population – but the total may have been much higher because not all victims were buried in St Michael's churchyard.

Despite the Pest House being pulled down in 1834 as a result of the Poor Law Ammendment Act ,the name Pest House Lane was retained until the late 1800s when its original title was then reinstated.

Locally, though, it was still referred to as 'The Lane' until the late 1920s. Where the actual Pest House stood later became the site of the town's water works but in the early 1990s was redeveloped for private housing.

The thought of ever wanting to live here has suddenly lost its former appeal !

Who needs Toys when you've got a laundry basket?

Yesterday I did the normal mundane business of doing the weekly wash of school uniform, work shirts, bedding - you name it and if it stayed still long enough I washed it !!

Having got it all dried I then started the mammoth task of ironing - which I absolutely HATE HATE HATE doing!! I will always get all of the work and school clothes ironed and put away for the week but as for anything else , it gets washed dried , folded neatly , put into piles and then put away into drawers or hung in the wardrobes.

How lazy I hear you cry ! I used to stand and slog over the crinkled pile of clothes and lovingly press them into neat creases, that was until the kids came along.

Georgie is our fashion queen and will change clothes depending on the weather , what is on TV , who is coming for tea and will colour co ordinate to suit her mood!!

Sam on the other hand would wear the same clothes for the year if I let him !

The kids ( and Malc) will get things out and not put them away properly - yes they'll be in the drawer, but not folded neatly, more like screwed into a ball if it won't quite fit in the drawer - so hence now I will not waste the day standing there ironing - I will iron when it needs to be ironed and will do no more !

Yesterday I had finished the laundry load and was in the kitchen having a cup of tea. Sam and I had had a conversation about him only having 3 more months left of primary school ( something which I am secretly dreading in a way), his forthcoming SAT exams ( which he is worrying about) and how he was growing up and the exciting times ahead.

I don't think he was really listening to me as instead he said " Mum can I have this please?"

He pointed to my old red plastic laundry basket - now empty of all clothes and sitting quietly on the floor.

"What do you want it for ?" I asked

"To play with" , he said.

With this he took it away into the sitting room and for the next hour my humble old washing basket became a boat , a turtle shell, a space ship and other imaginative items ( for 2, as by this time Georgie had decided to join him - even though it was now a bit of a squeeze to get both of them in !!)

It took me back in time to when he was about 2 or 3 years old and the same old trusty washing basket was again the greatest and most popular "toy" that we had in the house.

Who needs Wii's , Nintendo DS' or even Play stations when you have a cheap plastic laundry basket - priceless !

I can actually remember my sister and I playing in my Mum's basket ( a blue one) and the happy times we had - taking it out into the garden pretending it was a car a carriage - the choice was endless.

The boy that is fast growing into a wonderful young man, the boy that is now big enough to walk himself to school and is able to change a washer on a tap being only 11 years old (! - another story!), was for one lovely hour back to being the little boy that I once knew and having absolutely no cares in the world.

It made me feel like climbing in it too !!!

My Town Monday - Part 8

This week I thought I would write about my church "St Joseph's and the English Martyrs".

My family have been coming here for years and it has hosted the weddings of both my parents, my sister and myself as well as family funerals and other ceremonies.




We have had our fair share of priests over the years and currently have "Canon Eddie" who is loved by everyone. He is 70 + years old and a real character, who has his feet firmly in the land of the young generation being the only priest I know who has an Ipod!!

There is actually quite a large Catholic contingent in Bishops Stortord today , however in 1896 when the Sisters of Namur came to Bishops Stortford, there were only two Catholic families here - one being German and the other Irish.

The two Catholic Nuns were tolerated by the locals and really left alone .The Nuns were responsible for founding St Mary's convent which at that time only taught a handful of children ( my old school written about in a previous MTM post).


A Cardinal Vaughan visited the two Nuns in 1900 and decided that Bishops Stortford would be the perfect place to set up a small monastery and chapel.

He therefore instructed Redemptorist Father Oliver Vassall-Phillips to visit the town and find suitable premises. He in turn enlisted the help of a Lay Brother named Xavier Kerr, and both arrived in Stortford on 5 May 1900. They lived in a small cottage close to Windhill Lodge and held Mass in the convent every Sunday.

During Father Vassall-Phillips initial search of the town he did find a suitable property in which to start a monastery and chapel, but a passive resistor who hoped to keep Catholics out of the town quickly bought this up. When further searches for property proved fruitless he was of a mind to seek permission from Cardinal Vaughan to move on to the town of Hitchin. But in an encounter with the head of the resident German Catholic family, John Fehrenbach, his outlook was changed.

Learning of Father Vassall-Phillips plan to leave, Fehrenbach explained that he was a clock and watchmaker from Germany. He had a business in the town, and although his wife Ellen was a Protestant, he was anxious that his four children should be brought up as Catholics. His own Catholic training had taught him to keep the faith under any circumstances, and since the birth of his children he had regularly prayed to St Joseph that a priest might come to town. That prayer had been answered, so why, he asked, was the priest now leaving.

He then took the Father to see a disused public house at the corner of Portland Road and Newtown Road that, along with a piece of uncultivated land alongside, might be a suitable site for a small church to be built on. The pub was the former Cricketers Arms that had closed in 1884, and the site proved perfect for the task


Within weeks a small 'temporary' church built of corrugated steel was erected, and in November that year (1900) opened for worship. It was named St Joseph's, but its flimsy structure did bring about a certain amount of ridicule from New Town residents who quickly dubbed it the 'Tin Tabernacle'. Regardless of this, local people soon began filling the church every Sunday to sing hymns and listen to simple sermons, and many conversions to Catholicism were made.

Fate then took a hand. In 1903 a large landowner in the town, Mr W Wilby, died. His estate was left in the hands of his trustees, who in November that same year engaged Messrs G E Sworder to sell his properties in an auction held at the George Hotel. One of the properties, Windhill House – comprising of 5 acres, stables and coachman's cottage – went for £3,100, and the adjoining St Katherines House, used as a High School for girls, went for £1,850.

Both were bought by a Mr Foster on behalf of the Catholic Church, though this wasn't known at the time. If the purpose of his bidding had been known, then those still determined to keep Catholics out of the town may well have outbid him.

Plans for the site began immediately. The adjoining St Katherines House was to be demolished so that Windhill House could be extended for use as a monastery, and on the site of the old stable block, facing Windhill, would be built the new St Joseph's church.


Renowned church architect, Doran Webb of Salisbury was hired to design the church and apparently visited Florence for his inspiration. He wanted it to blend in with its surroundings, as all small-town Italian churches do, and locals immediately dubbed the resulting Italian style church the ‘Italian Mission’.

A church in San Miniato designed by Michelangelo inspired the interior, and for this Webb created a star-studded ceiling with scrolls around the arches. He also included a baldachin (a canopy over the pulpit). The marble altar is particularly impressive but the overall decoration was not to everybody’s taste. This was greatly simplified in the 1960s by Father L Hull, who also had the baldachin elegantly altered.







The large crucifix on the church's exterior is said to incorporate a representation of Bishop’s Stortford’s four former wayside crosses, and above the entrance porch are carved two Coats of Arms – one of the Redemptorist order, the other of Bishop Edmund Bonner, the last Catholic Bishop of London in Queen Mary’s reign.


The church, dedicated to St Joseph and the English Martyrs, was consecrated on 19 June 1906 by Bishop James Fenton.

Sadly Father Oliver Vassal-Phillips died at sea on 8 May 1932, while returning to Bishop's Stortford after a strenuous preaching tour of South Africa. He was aged 75

In December 1952 the monastery itself was almost destroyed when a fire raged here for more than three hours, at one point also threatening the fabric of nearby churches, St Michael’s and St Joseph’s.

First on the scene were members of the Salvation Army who, along with locals, formed a human chain to rescue valuable items from inside.

But as fifty firemen, using water pumped from the river Stort fought to contain the blaze, Brother Xavier, dashed back into the smouldering building exclaiming ‘I’ve got to save my three nuns’.

He then reappeared moments later holding a tin of his favourite pipe tobacco!



Born in Donegal, Ireland, in 1862, Brother Xavier Kerr was a Glasgow tram driver before he became a Redemptorist Lay Brother. Despite his arrival to Bishops Stortford to help find premises in which to start the small monastery and church he ended up staying here for the rest of his life.

He became a popular and well-loved man in the town, and when he died in 1960, aged 98, was laid to rest in the Monastery garden cemetery – a small, hedged plot of land at the rear of St Joseph’s church. The cross on his grave can still be seen, along with fifteen other crosses marking the graves of former Lay Brothers and priests.

My Mother who remembers Brother Xavier very well has been a regular at St Josephs since she around 4 years old upon moving to Bishops Storford from Ireland. She tells a really funny account of how she used to be taken to mass every week by her parents who were very strict Catholics.

She recalls being very excited at the time of the "offertory collection". The material covered bag with maghony handles would be passed over the top of her head by the adults , and she would see that all of them would put their hand into the bag.

The "chink" noise of jingling coins would be heard.When the bag was passed to her she dutilfully obliged but very innocently ,thinking this was some sort of "Lucky dip" would place her small hand in the bag and pull out a coin! Sometimes she would be lucky and pull out a shilling or even a half crown which she would then put into her Sunday best dress pocket and spend at the sweety shop later that morning!!

Her parents would have been horrified if only they knew. It did not appear to have been explained to her that you actually had to put the money in!

Six Unimportant things about me!

I've been "Tagged" by Monnik to write 6 unimportant things about myself

Anyway, here are the rules

1. Link back to the person who tagged you.

2. Post these rules on your blog.

3. Share six unimportant things about yourself.

4. Tag six random people at the end of your entry.

So here goes:

1. I am very sentimental and collect things. I keep my children's photos, their teeth ( ok I mug the fairies!) cards, letters that friends have given me, flowers , you name it and I will usually find a space for it. I also admitted recently to keeping the belly button clips of my children! ( as did Lyzzy so i can't be that weird- can I ? When we moved house some years ago, I boxed up my collection and moved it with us ( not telling husband exactly what I had)it now takes up a good quarter of the loft.

2. I love the countryside and would love to own a house in the middle of a field, a farm would be even better as I'd love to have horses, dogs and chickens. When I was a child I used to write "horse" on my Christmas list every year - to no avail!

3. I can be quite impulsive and determined to achieve goals. Some years ago I wanted to do a parachute jump , shear a sheep , drive a tractor and be shot out of a cannon.
I did all of them apart from one ( damn sheep - were too quick!)

4.In my life time have seen 2 ghosts - one man dressed in what I can only describe as a shiny centurion type hat and long dark cloak - it was approx 5am on a dark rainy morning on my way to work and he was walking along an unlit road - I pulled up beside him as I thought he was going to get run over, he looked right at me and then disappeared.
The second time was more chilling as it was actually outside a cemetary at about 3am. I was with a friend sitting in a car wide awake and talking ( like you do) and a menacing grinning youth was crouching down in front of our car staring at us. My friend who was a very no nonsense sort of person screamed - "Did you see that?"

The youth was transparent but we could see him clearly for a few seconds and then he disappeared before our eyes.The street was well lit and there was no where for him to go to and our view was unobstructed at all times - spooky!!

5. When I die I was like to firstly have all my organs and bits donated to whoever wants them. I would then like to be placed in a very cheap plain chipboard coffin on which I would want my family and friends to graffitify with messages and general words of encouragement to wish me on my way. I would then be cremated and scattered from the top of a place special to me.

6.When my husband went on an important business trip once to Germany - I replaced all of his underwear with shiny spangly glittery thong pants for a joke. I also gave him some helpful German phrases so that he could introduce himself to people - these included the German for " Hello , my table has a wobbly leg". When booking the hotel - under special requests I wrote helpful comments like -please ensure he has a ground floor room as prone to sleep walking, ensure that rubber sheet is on bed at all times and if my husband turns up at the hotel with another woman please call his wife immediately! He now packs his own bag and books his own hotels.

I am now tagging Lyzzy ( I know that I am meant to tag 6 people )

My Town Monday - Part 7

In this age of technology when any scene can be digitally reproduced at the press of a button on our mobile phones, it's easy to forget photography's beginnings and the evolution of the process that brought us to this point.

Many names have been associated with the invention of photography but, generally, just three names come to the fore: Louis Daguerre, William Henry Fox Talbot and George Eastman of Kodak fame.

One name that certainly won't spring to mind is Frederick Scott Archer, born the son of a Bishop's Stortford butcher in 1813 and, arguably, the man responsible for bringing photography to the masses.



He was orphaned at an early age and brought up by distant relatives and friends. As a boy he was apprenticed to a bullion dealer and silversmith in London, where his love of beautiful antique gems and, more especially, coins of all nations led him to the study of numismatics.

He specialized in coin appraisals, but his fascination with their artistic qualities led him into sculpture and eventually his own studio in Henrietta Street, London, where he sculptered busts of the rich and famous – including the Marquis of Northampton, Lord Albert Conyngham, and William Smith, of the National Portrait Gallery.

William Henry Fox Talbot had invented a photographic process called the 'calotype' from the Greek words kalos for 'beautiful' and typos for 'impression', the only flaw in the process being that images were fuzzy and soft due to poor quality paper.

To aid his work Frederick Scott Archer turned to photography and in 1847 was taught the calotype process by his medical attendant, Dr Hugh W. Diamond.

Like many other amateurs he was keen to perfect Fox Talbot's new art-form, although its greatest drawback of long exposure times didn't suit portrait photography.

Experimenting with collodion and various other substances to try and perfect an image printed on paper, he was soon devoting all of his time to photography in a studio at the rear of his new house in Great Russell Street, London.

His breakthrough finally came in 1849 when he coated a glass plate with a mixture of collodion and potassium iodide and immersed it in a solution of silver nitrate. This allowed for both the exposure and development to be made within the camera whilst the plate was still wet, and by using glass as the base the result was a near-perfect negative image. More importantly, exposure time was reduced to a matter of seconds as opposed to the many minutes required by Fox Talbot's calotype process.

In May 1850 he wrote an article about the use of pyrogallic acid for The Chemist, and in September that same year showed details and photographs made by the wet-plate collodion process to his friends. But not until March 1851, when he was one hundred percent sure his results were consistent, did he publish a treatise in The Chemist discussing the advantages of collodion and offer up detailed instructions on the process.

His friend, W.J. Taylor, encouraged him to patent the process before publishing it, but Archer had no desire to make money from his discovery. His only concern was to make photography readily available and affordable to the general public. He also dismissed the suggestion that his collodion images should be termed 'Archerotypes'.


Just in case Archer should have second thoughts about applying for a patent, Henry Fox Talbot ruthlessly and immediately claimed that any modification of his calotype process was covered by his own patent and issued public warnings that anyone found using the collodion process without first obtaining a licence from him, would be sued.

To back up his threat he brought suits and injunctions against many photographers but in 1854 one man, Martin Silvester La Roche, a London photographer, went to court to defend his right to use the collodion process. The case proved to be a legal milestone. He was found not guilty of infringing Fox Talbot's patent rights and as a result all photography was now free from restriction.

After this legal judgement, Archer published a manual on the process in 1854 entitled: 'The Collodion Process on Glass'. This ultimately made him the inventor of the collodion process because he was the first to publish a formula and method that others could follow. And follow they did; the process becoming so popular that Fox Talbot didn't even bother to renew his calotype patent.

Photographers were quick to see the commercial possibilties of Archer's process, for not only was the collodion wet-plate process cheap, uncomplicated and incredibly quick to perform, the images were sharp and clear and unlimited paper prints could be made from the glass negative. But despite its ease of use the process wasn't perfect. Photographers working outdoors needed to take a portable darkroom laboratory with them, and not without reason was it called the black art. The chemical make-up of collodion was explosive in a confined space if subjected to an open flame, and as a consequence of working in the dark, stains from the silver nitrate turned hands, fingers and clothing black.

Had Scott Archer patented his discovery he would most certainly have been a very rich man, but in the event he died penniless in May 1857, aged 44, and was buried in a paupers' grave in Kensal Green Cemetery, London. Afterwards a fund was set up for the benefit of his wife and three children by the Photographic Society, raising £767, and a civil list pension of £50 per annum was awarded.

He did have some of his collodion glass negatives displayed at the Great Exhibition at Crystal Palace in 1851 alongside calotypes and daguerreotypes, and made significent contributions in optics and camera design, patenting several of his inventions. But not once in his lifetime did he get the credit due to him for making such an advance in photography.

He was though, by nature, a selfless man with no ego to maintain. The British Journal described him as 'a man of very obliging disposition', and an unattributed quote says of him ' A very inconspicuous gentlemen, in poor health, with a somewhat sorrowful look and an angel wife'. Sadly, his 'angel' wife, Fanny, died in March 1858 leaving their three children orphaned. Of these only Alice survived to adulthood, but it is not known if she ever married.


The following tribute was paid to Frederick Scott Archer in Punch magazine, June 1857

To the Sons of the Sun.

'The inventor of Collodion has died, leaving his invention, unpatented, to enrich thousands, and his family unapportioned, to the battle of life. Now, one expects a photographer to be almost as sensitive as the Collodion to which Mr. Scott Archer helped him. A deposit of silver is wanted (gold will do) and certain faces, now in the dark chamber, will light up wonderfully, with an effect never before equalled by photography. A respectable ancient writes, that the statue of Fortitude was the only one admitted to the Temple of the Sun. Instead whereof, do you, photographers, set up Gratitude in your little glass temples of the sun, and sacrifice, according to your means, in memory of the benefactor who gave you the deity for a household'.

The collodion wet-plate process lasted into the 1880s, but by then the development of an emulsion based on gelatin had emerged. It retained its speed while dry but, more importantly, it could be applied to a flexible backing – rolls of film – instead of glass.

It was George Eastman who revolutionised photography by introducing roll film, and in June 1888 introduced the Kodak – a camera that was light, inexpensive and simple to operate. He also brought photography to the masses in the commercial sense, but it was Frederick Scott Archer's unselflessness that ultimately allowed him and others to prosper.