Edmund Blair Leighton
The group met up for tea and biscuits, followed by a journey through the decades while sharing family wedding photographs.
The earliest that one of our members possessed was from 1866. It showed her great grandmother marrying her Irish Marine husband. Rather than paper, the original photograph was on glass.
There were a few more photographs of large family groups in the late 1800s, with everyone looking very serious and some impressively large hats atop the ladies heads.
Moving into the early 20th century, one member shared a photo featuring a group of people that she had attempted to identify using any available clues. Family talk of an uncle who was 6’ tall helped to identify one man. A baby in its mother’s arms helped identify another family member. A particularly miserable look on a face enabled a further identification to be made of a family member who was known to sulk when not the centre of attention!
During World War One, some photographs featured men in uniform, others not. Moving into the 1920s, the dress styles and lengths, along with the headwear were seen to change.
A German wedding from the early 1920s featured a bride in a long dark dress and white veil, while a photograph from the 1930s was the first to show colour, by virtue of having been hand-coloured by the bride.
World War Two and post-war weddings featured an array of uniforms, demob suits and parachute silk dresses. By now, photographs showed people who actually appeared happy to be there, rather than the stern looks of earlier times.
We continued through the decades, seeing changing fashions, covid-affected weddings, the introduction of same sex weddings, right up to the most recent photograph from just two months ago. The afternoon really was a chance to travel through time.
Report by Helen Stenhouse