Ada Venn’s folding camera

Ada Venn ran the town’s photographic studio, above Ottley’s Drapery, from 1898 to 1931. She bought this folding camera in the 1920s for work outside the studio: weddings on church steps, floods on High Street, the last regatta on the Merrin. Her 1911 portraits of the 64 ropewalk workers were made with its heavier predecessor, which has not survived.

She left the camera and 3,100 glass-plate negatives to the society in her will, four years after it was founded. It was the first large gift we ever received. The camera goes back on show in her exhibition in 2027. Until then it is in the store.