See also Postcards and Aerial & Satellite Views

The [Off Site] Francis Frith Collection

This is a huge collection of over 330,000 high quality photographs taken between the the mid-nineteenth century and the second half of the twentieth century. They cover the whole country and they claim that there are 15,000 of Cornwall alone. They are available for sale via their web site, by mail order and from many other outlets. (This advertisement is spontaneous from a satisfied customer, I have no connection with the vendors.)

Originally I had a list here of the ones that I could discover from the catalogue for West Penwith but there are now over 1300 so I must ask you to go to their catalogue.

Dating Frith photographs

By studying a large sample of examples of Frith photographs and postcards I offer this table to relate the serial numbers to the date the picture was taken. There are some anomolies but the large majority conform to this pattern, the XX digits given are the first two of the five digit serial number.

XX Date XX Date XX Date XX Date XX Date
4 digits <1880 35–36 1895 52 1904 72–73 1922 83 1930
1x 1880s 40 1897 56 1906 76 1924 84 1931
22–27 1890 41 1898 59–61 1908 78 1925 86 1935
29 1891–92 47 1901 65–66 1913 79–80 1927 87 1936
31 1893 49–50 1903 69 1920 81 1928 88 1939
Letter >1945

[Off Site]Cornwall CAM

This is a web service provided by Charles Winpenny—he regularly goes out and takes pictures for his own and our pleasure.

[Off Site]Cornwall Clicks

This is a similar service provided by Stuart Lindsay, he doesn’t update quite so often but does archive the pictures and will do requests.

You will find pictures from both of these photographers on my Gallery pages.

[Off Site]West Penwith Photographs

Another excelent set of photographs by Mark Hattam, mostly of the St. Just in Penwith area but spreading a bit.

[Off Site]Chris Bond’s Photographs

[may require sign-in] A set of new photographs mixed with scans of an extensive postcard collection.