“My name is Carole Roberts and I am a Director of Croydon Natural History & Scientific Society which includes amongst its aims encouraging the study of the natural history, archaeology and local history of the Croydon area. It achieves this through talks and visits, and by publishing a Bulletin and Proceedings which are free to members. It also provides speakers for talks and displays its collections in exhibitions.
Our society is pleased to have contributed to one of three exhibitions that opened at Croydon Clocktower in Katharine Street Croydon on 1st February 2020 as part of the Museum of Croydon’s ‘What’s Your Croydon?’ project, the other exhibitions being from Good Wolf and from Play for Progress. Our exhibition, called Croydon through the lens of Charles Harrison Price, opened in the Atrium of the Clocktower. It is a collaborative project between Croydon Natural History & Scientific Society and the Bourne Society and has been very well received with many visitors leaving appreciative comments in our visitors’ book.
The exhibition has 49 photographic images by a particular Croydon photographer, called Charles Harrison Price. He was born in 1870 in America, and by 1898 was photographing in Croydon. His work included some photographs of people, and many of local scenes. His images were set apart from most others - partly by his skill in composition, and partly by the equipment he used. Whilst most photographers switched to film photography when this became available at the beginning of the 20th century, Price continued with glass-plate photography which gave clearer definition to the images.
The pictures are from the postcard collection of the late John Gent. John was a former President of our society and an extremely knowledgeable local historian of Croydon who was the author of several books including Croydon Past, and Croydon a Pictorial History and several through Croydon Natural History & Scientific Society, or CNHSS, such as Croydon from above, and Croydon in the 1940s and 1950s. His final book, completed shortly before he died in 2011, was A View of Croydon. Many of the images in John Gent’s books were from his extensive collection of postcards which he bequeathed to our society.
The unprecedented situation with coronavirus has closed Croydon Clocktower and the Croydon through the lens of Charles Harrison Price exhibition for the time being. We look forward to welcoming visitors to the exhibition again when it reopens. In the meantime, CNHSS has provided a selection of postcards from the John Gent Collection to be viewed online at the Museum of Croydon website.”
-Carole Roberts