In the Dales town of Settle, a family named Horner ran a photography studio. Over almost a century they captured the changing faces and places of Settle and the surrounding areas.
The images capture historic moments from construction of Giggleswick School Chapel during Victoria’s Diamond Jubilee in 1897, contrast local farming landscapes with those dedicated to industry, and capture the crowds at Settle Station as volunteers left to join Kitchener’s army in 1915, not to mention local weddings, fairs and community events, which all feature in the collection.
The Horner Collection is now digitally archived for all to see, thanks to painstaking work by a team of volunteers. North Craven Building Preservation Trust set up the Through a New Lens project allowing them to research, describe, digitise and display the Horner Collection in a permanent exhibition at The Folly.
A view of the Snow Castle built in Upper Settle during in March 1886. The snow fell during a significant snowstorm which dumped at least two feet of snow across large swathes of Northern England, during a winter when the Dales were ‘snowed in’ This team of volunteers worked alongside consultant photographic historian Damian Hughes to catalogue the photographs, scan them, and identify any conservation issues. An online catalogue of the photographs is now available for use by researchers, family historians and members of the public alike.
When the project began, the museum team estimated around 1,000 glass plate and film negatives were contained in the collection. During the digitisation process, they discovered that it’s just over 2,000
The Horner exhibition will run at least until the end of 2025. A permanent exhibition exploring the collection in more detail is planned in the future.
Photograph descriptions by heritage development officer, Caitlin Greenwood.
The online collection is free to access and can be found online here: https://hub.catalogit.app/13427
Further information thefolly.org.uk/collections/the-horner-collection
