The River Thames Revisited

The historical photographs appear in Henry Taunt’s ‘A New Map of the River Thames’, 1870. The researcher and co-researcher conducted archive research at the National Monuments Record (English Heritage) and Oxfordshire County Council’s Oxford Studies holdings. A selection of Taunt’s surviving images was made following his journey from Thames Head to the Houses of Parliament.

The volume consists of 65 paired ‘past and present’ photographs and paired texts. The latter consists of extracts from Taunt’s commentary in the 1870 publication and the researcher’s own commentary based on studies into the various locations seen in Taunt’s photographs. The researcher wrote in an observation style based on Taunt’s own literary style, particularly noting the detail of changes such as parts of the river no longer navigable, buildings demolished and vegetation swept away. The research also speaks of change in another important sense for example indicating transformations in traffic management and the farming of livestock. In addition, Taunt’s coloured maps in a later 1897 volume are reproduced together with the essay and portraits from his ‘Camping Out in a Boat’.

The book was launched at In the Footsteps of Henry Taunt, an exhibition of a selection of 30 pairings of the images at The River and Rowing Museum, October 6th –20th 2007. Apart from jointly taking the new photographs, Jeff Robins was involved in the digital facsimiles of the Taunt photographs.

The camera manufacturers Phase One made a high resolution digital camera with a screen and 17 million pixel back available to the researchers. Sony sponsored a Vaio laptop in the early stages of the research and Fuji UK/Hewlett Packard supported the initial printing phase (http://www.kallaway.co.uk/rrm-press-release3.htm).

• http://www.lcc.arts.ac.uk/60578.htm