The photograph on the left shows the Mayor (Councillor Perry) driving the first electric tram in April 1905. On the right, Mr. Perry can be seen driving the last tram to the depot in August 1931.

The Exeter Pictorial Record Society was founded in 1911 at the instigation of Exeter City Council's Town Planning Committee. This was a time of change and rebuilding in Exeter, and councillors and citizens were anxious to record Exeter as it changed as well as plan the best possilble city improvements. With these thoughts in mind, the EPRS was set up to record all aspects of Exeter city life.

or display a full list of the EPRS collection.

The first reference to the Exeter Pictorial Record Society can be found in the minutes of Exeter City Council's Town Planning Committee of 16th December 1910. Here a small note announces:

PICTORIAL SURVEY OF EXETER
Suggestions for obtaining a collection of pictorial representations of the most interesting features of the City, both modern and ancient, were considered, and it was

(7)RESOLVED, that the members of the Committee do exercise their influence in the formation of a Society for this purpose.

The city council was much concerned at this time with the new theories of town planning. The 1909 Town Planning Act had recently gone on the statute book, and the planning world was buzzing with the new ideas and enthusiasm of Raymond Unwin, Ebenezer Howard, Patrick Geddes etc. Exhibitions and conferences on town and city planning abounded across the United Kingdom.

Exeter took the new ideas very seriously, participating in the 1911 Garden Cities and Town Planning Association tour of Germany, and inviting the Cities and Town Planning Exhibition of the same year to come to Exeter as part of its touring scheme after its London run.

Perhaps most significantly, the Chairman of the Town Planning Committee, Alderman Widgery invited Professor Geddes to come to Exeter to lecture on his theories.

Born in 1854, Geddes was a town planner of imagination and vision, harnessing other disciplines to his planning work. He promoted the study of existing problems in towns and cities, believing that it was through understanding of the local area ~ its history and development ~ that planners could improve life for its citizens and create a better urban environment. He emphasised the preservation of historical traditions, grassroots involvement and the rediscovery of past traditions of city building. He was director of the City and Town Planning Exhibition mentioned above.

In April 1911, Geddes responded to the City Council's invitation and came to Exeter. His lecture drew a large audience.

The Exeter Flying Post reported his talk thus:

"[Exeter] was one of the beautiful cities of Europe, but let him add quite frankly that it impressed him to some extent as a sleeping beauty. (Laughter) He meant that Cathedral cities lived a good deal upon their past, and had a certain moderate and genial prosperity, but so far as he could discover they did not think very much about the future at all. The business of town planning was to attempt to consider the future. It was an historical inquiry in order to understand the present and to prepare for the future. [...] He urged that Exeter should take its place in the larger and brighter future by intelligent foresight."

While Geddes emphasised studying the past to build for the future, the idea of recording the past came from Sir Benjamin Stone. Stone was a Birmingham MP ~ a great collector and an enthusiastic photographer. In 1897, the year of Queen Victoria's Diamond Jubilee, he founded the National Photographic Record Association:

"to leave to posterity a permanent pictorial record of contemporary life, to portray for the benefit of future generations, the manners and customs, the festivals and pageants, the historic buildings and places of our time."

This emphasis on recording and treasuring the past was of its time. 1877 had seen the founding of the Society for the Protection of Ancient Buildings. The National Trust was formed in 1895.

The Amateur Photographer of 1902 sent out a plea for help to its readers:

"The need for systematic survey work in all parts of the country becomes increasingly apparent as the removal of old landmarks steadily progresses .... we invite our readers' help in this way."

Local enthusiasts responded. Although the NPRA closed in 1910, we know that by 1916 there were photographic surveys working throughout the country (15 counties and 17 cities all had their own record societies). Exeter was among them.

In the spring of 1911, both the town planning committee of Exeter City Council and the local newspaper were reporting the successful formation of the EPRS with a large body of enthusiastic volunteers (109 members according to one newspaper report).

The city council voted the EPRS £50 to fit up a room in the Royal Albert Memorial Museum with photographic apparatus. Enthusiastic supporters donated a quantity of original material to the scheme.

Unlike other early record societies, the EPRS did not restrict its collections to photographic material. The collection contains paintings, prints, drawings, maps as well as photographs.

Although there was an element of flexibility in the material the EPRS accepted, it did set out to be methodical in its aims and scope. Its stated object (as found in the schedules) was:

"to preserve by permanent photographic process, records of antiquities, anthropology, buildings of interest, geology, natural history, passing events of local or historical importance, portraits of notable persons, old documents, rare books, prints, maps, and scenery, so as to give a comprehensive survey of what is valuable and representative in the City of Exeter."

Individual members were allocated special sections to work on according to their "known abilities". Mary Hare systematically photographed Exeter schools, J. Hinton Lake concentrated his attention on the almshouses in Exeter, and W. Weaver Baker, worked on the misericords in Exeter Cathedral.

All contributions were considered by the committee ~ and the schedules do record the odd few that were rejected (tantalisingly they don't report the reasons).

Each picture has an accompanying schedule in which the contributor's name and details were added. Some schedules contain more information than others ~ a particularly meticulous contributor such as Mary Hare was careful to add details such as length and time of exposure. Other are disappointingly brief. In some cases, relevant newspaper articles and letters from contributors have been added to the bound volumes. This all makes the schedules a fascinating source of information.

Although the society did not restrict itself to photographic contributions, photography did play a very important part in the society's work. Photography was used (as we might use the digital process) to copy original material that was loaned to the society.

Stringent EPRS guidelines were laid down concerning the enlargements that were to be produced. They were to be 12 inches by 10 inches, and of the carbon process as opposed to the platinotype, since it had been decided that this "was the only process which could be relied upon to give an absolutely permanent result".

It was proposed that these enlargements should be part of a permanent revolving exhibition in the museum.

H. Tapley-Soper, the Exeter City Librarian, and F.R. Rowley, Curator of the Royal Albert Memorial Museum, were joint honorary secretaries of the EPRS. At their instigation both the library and the museum drew from their existing collections to donate material to the EPRS.

F. R. Rowley donated a remarkable collection of drawings by Arthur Glennie. There are all light pencil sketches of buildings standing in Exeter some hundred years earlier. On many of them Glennie had noted the date of demolition of the building which rather suggests that Glennie had been commissioned to capture a picture of the building before it was removed.

Arthur Glennie was a member of the Royal Society of Painters in Watercolours. He had beeen taught by the Devonian artist Samuel Prout, and early in his career, worked as a drawing master in Sidmouth. Possibly this is the period when he completed these Exeter drawings. He later went on to paint the places of the Grand Tour, settling in Rome in 1855 (where he died in 1890).

H. Tapley-Soper donated several early prints of Exeter by the local artist, George Rowe, showing the city as it was in the early 19th century. These are a striking contrast to the intimacy of the Glennie sketches, being vivid panoramic views of the city.

A wide range of individuals contributed to the growing collections of the Exeter Pictorial Record Society.

There were photographic enthusiasts like Mary Hare, J. Hinton Lake, and A.J. Tucker, the honorary secretary of Exeter Camera Club.

Some pictures came from professional photographers ~ Chandler & Co, Heath & Bradnee, J.R. Browning and J.F. Long. In a few cases, the schedules record that the society purchased pictures, but on the whole images were donated to the society.

Local professionals who used their drawing skills for their work also donated material. Thus work came from the surveyor Charles Bulgin and the architect Octavius Ralling. Another architect, James Jerman, provided some fine drawings of furniture and interiors at Tucker's Hall.

Kate M. Clarke, an expert on the misericords at the Cathedral, donated photographs and drawings. E.K.Prideaux also wrote knowledgeably about Exeter Cathedral and again she gave pictures to the collection.

Intriguingly the EPRS also contains several pictures donated by Godfrey Bingley, who was a substantial contributor to Leeds Photographic Society ~ perhaps he was on holiday in Devon, or possibly this indicates a stronger link between societies?

There were, of course, many other talented and dedicated individuals who contributed to the society's work. Current estimates indicate that nearly 50 contributors gave pictures to the society.

The EPRS held its first exhibition in July of 1912, when the Devonshire Association celebrated the 50th anniversary of its founding with a visit to Exeter.

By now the EPRS held 300 prints and negatives in store, and of these, 90 enlargments had been made and were ready and prepared for exhibition.

On Wednesday 12th July 1912, the Mayor and Mayoress held a reception at the Royal Albert Memorial Museum for the association, and it was as part of these celebrations that the EPRS exhibited for the first time, their

"photographs of buildings, courts and terraces of Exeter which have disappeared or are about to be demolished, Church Plate,etc".

A sad little note of July 1935 has been affixed to the front of the schedules. It reports that:

"The Society was formed in 1911 but during the Great War it became more or less inactive and after the War, owing to the increased cost of photographic materials and the lack of voluntary workers, the Society's activities ceased.

The collection of photographs, negatives, etc made by the Society has since been incorporated into the City Library collections of Prints, Drawings, etc."

Although the collection has suffered over the years (many of the display prints show clear signs of water damage, foxing and woodworm), most of the material has survived the war. Perhaps most importantly, the accompanying schedules still exist which tell us so muich about the origins of each picture.

What didn't survive the war are the records of the society's meetings, minutes and plans. We must assume that these would have been in the City Librarian's office which was burnt out when the City Library was fire-bombed in the Blitz of 1942.

Staff in the Westcountry Studies Library began digitising this material earlier this year. As the work progressed, it became clear that the library held much more of the EPRS collection than was originally thought. Confusion had arisen because so much of the original collection had been absorbed into the general library collections.

Consequently what you see on the website now is only the beginning of the work of digitising this collection. There will be much more added as work continues over the next year.

Edwards, Elizabeth, James, Peter & Barnes, Martin. A record of England: Sir Benjamin Stone and the National Photographic Record Association 1897 - 1910. (Dewi Lewis Publishing in association with V&A Publications, 2006).
Gower, H.D., Jast, L. Stanley, & Topley, W.W., The camera as historian. (Sampson Low, Marston and Co., Ltd., 1916).
Geddes, Patrick. Cities in evolution. (Williams & Norgate Ltd., 1949).
Stone, Benjamin. Sir Benjamin Stone's pictures. Records of national life and history. (Cassell and Company, Ltd., 1906).

Thanks are especially due to Professor Elizabeth Edwards of the London College of Communication and co-author of A record of England: Sir Benjamin Stone and the National Photographic Record Association 1897 - 1910 for enthusiasm, advice and a view of the wider picture.