Held at:	Private collection
Reference:	JC
Source:	Guest contributions
Title:	Digital Archive: Richard Jenkins Photograph Collection
Place name:	Newton St Margarets
Date:	1900s

Description:

Jenkins Collection:

A collection of photographs by amateur photographer and reluctant farmer Richard Jenkins [1891 - 1964] provides an unrivalled record of life in south-west Herefordshire in the early part of the twentieth century. He became a familiar sight to the residents of Newton and St Margarets travelling the lanes on his motorbike with his Thornton-Picard camera and tripod loaded into the sidecar when he should have been tending the family farm at Quarrelly, overlooking the Black Mountains. In a remote community such as Newton it was expected that a farmer's son would take up the plough not the camera, but Richard Jenkins had little interest in working the land. Fortunately for posterity he chose to go his own way and exercise his talent for observation and photographic composition, leaving a legacy of hundreds of glass photographic plates that survive as a unique insight into local affairs at a time of great social and technological change. We have not been able to access the full original collection but the examples below are from prints that have been contributed piecemeal from a variety of local sources and are presented by us here as a specimen portfolio.

Ewyas Lacy Study Group