A good audience in the Village Hall
heard our speaker for the March 2012 meeting – Derek
Edwards. He arrived with two screens and two
projectors (Phil’s extension lead definitely was needed
on this occasion!).
The talk was fascinating. We
were guided through aerial photography from a hot air
balloon, a gypsy moth plane, to a helicopter. The
two pioneers of aerial photography were George Swain
followed by Harry Lowe, both masters of their
skill. Aerial photography, of course, was used as
military reconnaissance but the first aerial
archaeological photograph was of Stonehenge in
1904!
The audience was most interested in
the aerial photographs taken over Norwich, Great
Yarmouth, Potter Heigham and Horsey, showing many of the
great changes:
The weekend in Great Yarmouth when
the fishing boats were all lined up in dock because the
girls, who gutted the fish, went on strike for
a pay rise from 19s.6d. to one guinea a week. They
got their rise!
The Britannia
Pier, where steamers docked bringing day-trippers from
Southend;
The flower gardens
where the Pleasure Beach now is;
The floods of 1938
in Horsey.
Most interesting - so we have booked
Derek to come again.
This is actually the first of a two
part talk, so this report will be extended in due
course.
Norfolk from the air
Memoirs
of an Archaeological Photographer –
Derek
Edwards
PART
TWO of Wings over Norfolk, October 2012
There is a lot more to aerial
photography than most of us imagined. Many of
us are used to Google Earth photographs, and some of us
know of how Ordnance Survey use aerial photography to
produce their modern maps. These give us the broad
view, seeing what we happen to see. Archaeological
photography is a more precise skill, seeking out and
observing what mere mortals didn’t even know was
there. It is the Sherlock Holmes of aerial
photography.
It is clear that Derek Edwards and
his many predecessors had the time of their
life. Imagine being able fly in a highly
manoeuvrable lightweight aircraft anywhere in the
UK, taking off and landing in airfields that at first
were little more than meadows, seeking out clues to the
hidden history of our land. The pilot, we
were told, was the most important person, whose job was
to get the photographer to precisely the right place,
altitude and angle. In the early days the
right angle might involve hanging upside-down out of an
open cockpit.
Aerial photographs have been taken in
Norfolk for 115 years. For a long time 1897 photos
taken during balloon trips in Norwich, celebrating Queen
Victoria’s Diamond Jubilee, were thought to be the
oldest in the UK. Recently, however, balloon
pictures of the Crystal Palace at the1851 Great
Exhibition have been found (is this right, or were they
taken some time later?).
Early photos have become historical
records. Compare them with modern aerial
photographs and the massive, sometimes devastating
change is starkly revealed. What a lovely secluded
country village was Hemsby in the 1930s. How
unlovely it looks from the air right now. How much
more dramatic the fisher girls’ strike of 1936 becomes
when the aeroplane reveals the harbour chockfull with
the serried ranks of over 400 out of work
drifters. From the air the recession of our
coastline looks more threatening still.
Aerial photographs of crops
innocently growing in our fields reveal the most
astonishing details of past landscapes hidden
beneath. Settlements can be reasonably
reconstructed from the Bronze age and even before.
No time for this now - but we hope that an example with
pictures can appear in due course. I think it is
the best bit of all.