Catalogue description FAMILY PHOTOGRAPHS RELATED TO MISS MOORCROFT

The Album

Miss Moorcroft knows no details of the photographs. On the first page is written "C. Holden. August 1879." The majority of the photographs come from the studio of "Benjamin Wyles & Co., Victoria Studio, Nevill Street, Southport." From written messages on the back of a couple of photographs (see items and) and from the dates of the awards advertised on the back of the portraits it is possible that Holden was apprenticed to Wyles and that these photographs were taken by Holden during the period 1875-1879. (Southport Trade Directories show that Benjamin Wyles M.P.S.A., 'A Photographer, Artist and Chemist' set up a practice in Southport in 1875 and continued, latterly as a chemist, up until 1900. Wyles was the author of "Instructions for beginners in Photography" (1885) and "The Camera Amongst the Sea-birds" (published in 'Strand' Vol IV, Nov. 1892); he was, apparently, the first British bird photographer and an article on him, ('A Lancashire Pioneer' by Eric Hardy, appears in Vol III No. 3 pp. 312-313, July to Sept. 1953). Descriptions of the photographs, in the order they appear in the album, are as follows. All come from Benjamin Wyles & Co, Victoria Studio, Nevill Street, Southport, except where otherwise stated.

See also deposit no. 1192.

Moorcroft, Miss, fl 1980

• Southport, Lancashire

The photographs here constitute one of four albums left to Miss Moorcroft by her uncle, Charles Holden. Miss Moorcroft who is 91 and severely deaf and blind, thinks the photographs were taken by Holden. What is known of Charles Holden's life is as follows: born in Preston c. 1851, one of the three sons of William Archimedes Holden, a gentleman of leisure, who eventually went to manage a coffee plantation in Brisbane, Australia, but died on arrival just before Charles was born. William's father was Moses Holden, a clergyman and astronomer of some repute. William married Miss Moorcroft's mother's mother Mary, one of twelve Blinkhorn children (the Blinkhorn's were a Bolton family who owned a mill at Rose Hill, Bolton - the present site of Burnden Park, the ground of Bolton Wanderers Football Club.)

Charles Holden wanted to be an artist and was apprenticed to a studio in Southport where he became interested in photography. He then moved sometime before 1900 to work in a photographer's studio in St. Anne's Square, Manchester, after which he set up his own studio at no. 27 Wilmslow Road, Rusholme, Manchester (opposite the Tram Terminus). He died in 1928, having given up his work some years before after suffering a stroke.