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In the fifties and early sixties, books like these slim volumes published by Country Life, (this one in 1958), were the souvenir purchase for upmarket holiday makers. A hefty fifteen shillings worth of carefully-framed monochrome pictures of famous landmark villages, landscapes and oh-so-familiar time-worn buildings. All taken with infinite care on grown-up equipment that was more furniture than camera, the sports coated photographer doffing his trilby to passers-by as they moved out of (or nearly) the carefully-framed shot. The decades roll on, and the books start to gather dust in the topography section of secondhand bookshops, maybe even ending up on the 'Everything £1' table outside, covered in polythene against the rain. But I feel a renaissance coming on. These straightforward, non-tricksy portraits are of a country before the storm. The telling details of Unmitigated England start to rise up into the consciousness. Where Dedham in Essex now has cars mounting pavements and each other in profusion, 1958 saw just one Fordson van in the street, probably delivering scrag end to the vicar's wife. And Kersey's watersplash is great fun for the flash driver of a cream Austin Somerset. I wonder how much a rotting door sill was to replace?
No, honestly, I'm not going to go on about cars again. Well, not very much. Here we have the 1952 Motor Show Number of Country Life, the essential top shelf mag. for top rural people. Of course there's page after page of Singer Roadsters, Austin Herefords and Bristol 401s, but, as now, it's the property pages that make me go cross-eyed. I know it's all relative, but in 1952 you could buy a country house near Wimborne in Dorset with 3 sitting rooms, 9 principle bedrooms and 3 bathrooms for £8,500. Oh, and agents Turner, Lord & Ransom (really) would throw in a servant's hall, lodge house, and garages with 'a flat over'. And I bet Mrs. Miniver waiting to see her dentist still looked at the monochrome ad. and went "How dare they? How can it possibly be worth that". So, back to the cover. This evocative watercolour is by Rowland Hilder, a prolific artist who lived in Blackheath and whose work can be seen in Shell posters and books. To my eye the car isn't a specific model, and, although there's something of the Allard about it, one can imagine the editor in Country Life's Tavistock Street offices briefing Hilder to keep it anonymous- "Don't want to upset any of those motor chaps, eh Rowland?".
In the fifties and early sixties, books like these slim volumes published by Country Life, (this one in 1958), were the souvenir purchase for upmarket holiday makers. A hefty fifteen shillings worth of carefully-framed monochrome pictures of famous landmark villages, landscapes and oh-so-familiar time-worn buildings. All taken with infinite care on grown-up equipment that was more furniture than camera, the sports coated photographer doffing his trilby to passers-by as they moved out of (or nearly) the carefully-framed shot. The decades roll on, and the books start to gather dust in the topography section of secondhand bookshops, maybe even ending up on the 'Everything £1' table outside, covered in polythene against the rain. But I feel a renaissance coming on. These straightforward, non-tricksy portraits are of a country before the storm. The telling details of Unmitigated England start to rise up into the consciousness. Where Dedham in Essex now has cars mounting pavements and each other in profusion, 1958 saw just one Fordson van in the street, probably delivering scrag end to the vicar's wife. And Kersey's watersplash is great fun for the flash driver of a cream Austin Somerset. I wonder how much a rotting door sill was to replace?
