Thursday 21 December 2023

HIGH VICTORIAN HEREFORD - BY GASLIGHT

Although it has yet to snow, we're now in the depths of the deep midwinter, and so a very early and interesting "street photograph" of Hereford High Town way back in December 1897:


December 1897 is pretty much the apogee of the British Empire - Queen Victoria has been sixty years on the throne, while the country has been through the enormous changes wrought by the Industrial Revolution and is considered the "workshop of the world". The dusty, drab and industrialised Boer War is two years away; the disaster of "The Titanic", fifteen. Only horses hooves and the tracks of carriages disturb the fallen snow in the centre of Hereford, and gaslight is the only illumination. Although the "cabbies hut" in the middle of this scene has long gone - swept away by the passage of time, along with the horses, carriages and gaslight - the streetscape is instantly recognisable even today.

Note : for a reverse view of the same area, but lit by electricity in 1939, see THIS POST 

Add Edit: roughly the same view - in daylight, and therefore rather more prosaic - in 1915. The "cabbies hut" is still there, but everything about the world has decisively changed from 1897:



and again sixty years later, in 1975, when High Town was pedestrianised:

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