Tag: photographer

Alice Kate Richards – smile please!

When you have a professional photographer in the family you can be guaranteed some super snaps – and Alice Kate Stroud had one of Swindon’s best.

Alice Kate Stroud was born in Hereford on February 27, 1870 the younger of James and Ellen’s (Eleanor) two daughters. The family lived at 49 Portland Street, Hereford where James worked as a railway guard. It was probably inevitable that they would eventually end up in Swindon and in 1881 they were living at 22 Merton Street, a property they shared with Edwin and Louisa Brittain.

In 1892 Alice married railway clerk Thomas Richards and by 1901 Alice, Thomas and their two sons Leslie & Stanley were living at 15 Medgbury Road, next door to Alice’s in-laws. But by 1911 they were living at 10 London Street where they would remain for the rest of their lives.

So, who was this talented photographer of whom you speak, I hear you ask?

Well, in 1890 Alice’s elder sister Mary Jane Stroud married William Hooper.

Ah, now you understand.

Alice was photographed by Hooper as a young woman and appears frequently in many Hooper family photographs. We see her with her sister on a boat on Coate Water; with her husband and two sons; cradling her little granddaughter Mary and we watch her grow old alongside Mary Jane and William Hooper.

Alice died in 1958 at Kingsdown Nursing Home and was buried in grave plot D1030 which she shares with her in-laws Maria and Richard Nathaniel Richards. Thomas Richards died at 10 London Street and was buried with his parents and his wife on October 14, 1959.

Images are published courtesy of P.A. Williams and Local Studies, Swindon Central Library.

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William and Mary Hooper rock up at Stonehenge

James Smith Protheroe – no busier man in Swindon

From local dignitaries and Victorian edifices to pageants and poets, photographer James Smith Protheroe and his partner Thomas Henry Simons captured them all.  But it could have turned out very differently.

One of tailor Thomas Protheroe’s eleven children, James was born in 1858 over the shop in Goat Street, Swansea, next door to the public library.  By 1871 13 year old James was already working alongside his father, described as ‘young tailor’ in the census of that year. 

But his artistic leanings had the support of his elder brother Thomas, an artist, who left Wales following his marriage to Emma Chapman in 1872.  Thomas moved to Bristol and by 1876 had his own photographic studio at 33 Wine Street and encouraged James with his ambitions.

Thomas remained in Bristol, while James established himself at 30 Regent Street, New Swindon.   In 1881 the Protheroe studios won a first class silver medal for oil painting at the Plymouth Art and Industrial Exhibition and proudly declared royal patronage by HRH Prince of Wales.

Image published courtesy of Local Studies, Swindon Central Library.

Towards the end of the century Prothero’s sitters included Queenstown School teacher Edith New who would shortly leave Swindon to join the Women’s Social and Political Union and the fight for Votes for Women. And in 1903 the GWR Hammerman poet Alfred Williams took his bride Mary Peck along to the Regent Street studio to pose for their wedding photograph.

By then James had taken his nephew into the business, Thomas Henry Simons, the son of his sister Elizabeth and her husband Henry, a commercial shipping clerk.  James married Fanny Jane Redman, a dress mantle maker, in 1894 and the new century saw the family photography firm based at 96 Victoria Road. 

Although the Protheroe name still headed the firm it was Thomas who increasingly took care of the day to day business as James involved himself with the public life of Swindon. 

Conductor of the Baptist Tabernacle choir, Justice of the Peace and Wiltshire County Council member, Chairman of the Swindon and Highworth Board of Guardians and member of the Swindon Victoria Hospital Committee are among just a few of the organisations on which James served.

James died at Eirianfa, Newton Villas, Mumbles, overlooking Swansea Bay, in October 1929 aged 72. His body was returned to Swindon for burial in Radnor Street Cemetery.

His obituary published in the North Wilts Herald declared that ‘there was no busier man in Swindon, and few who will be more missed.’

James Smith Protheroe was buried on October 30, 1929 in plot D34A, a plot he shares with his wife Fanny who died in 1925.