Dorset observed
Frederick Warner
A Dorset Camera, 1855-1914 David Burnett (The Dovecote Press £3.25) A Dorset Camera, /914-1945 David Burnett (The Dovecote Press £3.50)
A Wiltshire Camera 1835, /914 David Burnett (Compton Russell £3.50)
These books are a double kill. If you are interested in early photography, it is here. The willing, indeed loving help of the remarkable. provincial museums of Dorset and Wiltshire have contributed a marvellous pictorial record of Wessex life over the last one hundred and twenty years. In Wiltshire it goes even further back, and it is beautiful to see the furry detail of a Calotype taken by Talbot in 1844; it's William Henry Fox Talbot if you care. It may be difficult to explain why these pictures of one hundred years ago are so effective. Some of them are not. But usually the subjects of the early photographs respond to the camera with an intensity born of unfamiliarity and a new sense of occasion.
However, the books are meant less as a record of photographic technology than as a view of earlier times, and as such they are beautifully organised. I think that any lover of Thomas Hardy would rather have this record of Wessex life for his Christmas present than any recent volume of critical essays or biographical research. Their subject is change, or the awaiting of change. The author-editor takes a passionate view of this theme but feels obliged, in his introduction, to accept it philosophically. Goodbye to all that. Poring over his photographs he sees communication as the great agent of change. That's true up to a point, but there have been other technological forces at work on the ancient Wessex countryside; they came suddenly at the end of the 'thirties. The cultivation of grass leys as a crop (instead of leaving grazing to the bounty of nature), the bale milker permitting cows to be milked far from the farmstead, the war-time grain subsidies encouraging the downland farmer to produce wheat and barley for the nation's survival — all of these led to the disappearance of much of the heath land described in the first disturbing chapter of The Return of the Native.
You can see such differences if you look at the photographs of the fields in these books and photographs of today. But the pictures of the villages and towns are more mysterious. Particularly in West Dorset, the apparent changes are slight; only fire, collapse or the tarring of the road have changed the pictures as far as we can see from the outside. But the social composition inside the houses has changed drastically. One hundred, even fifty years ago, these were still self-contained communities with landlord, yeoman farmers, labourers, tranters, bakers, butchers, blacksmiths, joiners, wheelwrights all dependent on each other and contributing to the same life. Today the agricultural population has shrunk to a small proportion of the whole and the supporting teams of mechanics, milk-processors and feed-millers have mostly withdrawn into the larger towns. So small houses and cottages have fallen empty, been renovated and taken over by widows, antique-dealers, retired admirals and majors, bank-managers and businessmen commuting to some half-distant industrial complex. This change of social direction has helped to fossilise the villages architecturally, since there is no more ardent conservationist than a landed sea-dog.
The third volume, A Dorset Camera, 1914-1945 is, for many of us, the mirror of our own experience and takes the reader through his youth. More clearly than in his own recollection he can see what has been lost and can project forward from 1945 the accelerating pace of change, the devastation of old Poole, the holiday camps and caravan parks of the coastline. One man's loss is many men's gain and the summer tourists who pour down the M4, the M5 and the A30 are not much bothered. Wessex, and most of all West Dorset, retains more of its nineteenth century feel than any part of England. Only those who have grownup there, or who understand these books, can say how poignant and deep is the change. For these Natives there is no Return. Their reward is a healthier and better paid life.
Mr Burnett has accompanied his photographs with a text as meticulous as the camera's eye. His information is detailed, accurate, evocative and sometimes surprising. It is to be hoped that his books are such a success that he will be encouraged to extend his labours to the rest of Wessex, and indeed to other parts of the British Isles.
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