Ada Venn’s Tarrow: Glass Plates, 1898 to 1931

Ada Venn photographed Tarrow for 33 years from a studio above the drapery. When she died in 1965 she left the society her camera and 3,100 glass-plate negatives. Our volunteers have spent six years cleaning, sleeving and scanning them.

We have printed 90 of them for this exhibition. They include the 1911 series of every ropewalk worker, the 1923 flood photographed from a rowing boat, and a run of shop windows on High Street that she took, as far as we can tell, just because she liked them.

Some of the people in these photographs have never been named. Each print has a card underneath. If you know who someone is, write it on the card and we will check it against the archive.