A Memorable Gift from The Francis Frith Collection
The Frith archive was founded by Francis Frith, the pioneer Victorian photographer, in 1860 and today contains over 365,000 photographs of some 7,000 towns and villages throughout Britain. Taken between 1860 and 1970 these form a topographical record of Britain without equal and is recognised as probably the only photographic collection of national importance in private hands in Britain today. The importance of the Frith archive is as a topographical and social record. It provides an amazingly detailed visual record of over 7,000 towns and villages, as well as illustrating the enormous social and structural changes which have taken place in Britain since 1860. Whilst some of the photographs are undoubtedly artistically outstanding, the real value of the archive lies in its scale. There is no other archive which can illustrate this period of British history so extensively or to such a high quality. In association with Francis Firth we can now offer you the chance buy a photograph that reminds YOU of YOUR roots. Buy a photograph of YOUR home town; where YOU were born, went to school or college, were married, owned your first home, went on holiday etc. - photographs of the places that bring back specific memories for YOU. Whilst Frith photographs depict specific towns and villages, many thousands also feature subjects that can be categorised by Theme - such as cars; buses; boats & ships; trains; markets; occupations; fashions; fishing etc. These also generate their own personal associations for people with a special interest in the subject matter. Original negatives for 98% of the views still exist. The quality of the pre 1940 negatives is outstanding and so good they can, with few exceptions, be enlarged to 40' by 25' murals! For this reason it is also possible to enlarge and extract small details from most subjects.

Reproduced courtesy of The Francis Frith Collection. - Trafalgar Square, London 1900