1967 Hillman Imp coupe
Interesting new site:
Over the last few weeks I’ve been working on a new site for discovered film pictures which I’ve called Found Film. I’m happy to say that, although there are still some features I want to add, the site is basically running and now has enough content to make it interesting to visit, so I’ve started to publicise the site. For anyone interested in seeing it, the url is http://found-film.co.uk. To whet your appetite, I’ve added a selection of pictures to this post from the site which I’ve published over the last few days whilst I’ve been getting the site ready. To see any picture in its full glory try clicking on it.
What’s it all about?
The basic idea of the site is to give a home to photographs which have been taken on film and discovered either in a long forgotten vintage camera or I have bought as boxes of colour slides or photos from house clearances and car boot sales.
This came about because I realised that although it is common place these days to share pictures on social media, there must be millions of pictures taken over the years which have only been seen by the person who took it or their immediate group of family or friends. The pictures could have been locked in drawers or cupboards, hidden in old albums or in some cases sitting undeveloped in an old camera. Just think of the moments in history which may have been undiscovered and could now be seen.
Source: Simon Hawketts’s Photo Blog : The Found Film site is live
When I was a child (about 9 years old) growing up in the UK I lived across from an old abandoned building. Although I can’t now find the reference, I recall that the lower part of this building was associated in some way with Crew Hall (i.e. the baron/earl/marquess of Crewe). I was supposed to have been a coach house, although I’m not clear on why it would be here since we were about 5.5 miles from Crewe Hall.
Of greater interest in the context of this post is the upper floor, which was supposed to have been a school house. I was fascinated by this area. You went up a rickety (and probably unsafe) rusting, iron staircase and through a door at the top. Inside were a number of cobweb and dust covered objects. One was a spooky looking painting of a young girl with long blonde hair and a hat. I was one of those paintings where the eyes seem to follow you around. Among these ‘treasures’ I found a pile of glass plates. Looking more closely I noticed that they seemed to have images on them. I took a couple of them home and my father told me that they were old glass negatives. I could recognize a number of shops on the main street in our town and asked my father if I could give them to the present owners. I suppose technically I was stealing them, but nobody seemed to care about them. In any case my father, who always followed rules/regulations and did things “by the book” didn’t seem to have a problem with this. I took them to the shops in question and the owners seemed to be pleased to get them.
A number of years later the entire building was extensively renovated and turned into apartments. By then I had long ago moved across the Atlantic. While I have no knowledge of what happened to all contents, I imagine that everything was probably thrown out. In hindsight I wish I had kept all the glass negatives.