Description:The Warwickshire Photographic Survey is made up of some 25,000 photographs, 10,000 of which are from the original survey. Set up in 1890 by the Birmingham Photographic Society members Sir John Benjamin Stone and William Jerome Harrison, its aim was to record the urban and rural landscape of Warwickshire. The first collection of photographs was presented to the city in 1892 and images were sporadically added to the collection until 1958, the scheme having been revived after the Second World War.
With so many photographs making up the collection the survey covers the whole spectrum of life in Warwickshire. The survey recorded many aspects of schooling, often showing the children in posed positions during lesson time. Children can be seen in cookery lessons making pastry, conducting physics and chemistry experiments, learning French and participating in drill in the playground. Yet these photographs only show one side of the schooling experience, and to a large extent an ideal intended by the teachers and institutions. The every day school experience would normally consist of the four R’s: reading, (w)riting, (a)rithmetic and recitation. This was far more book based than this exhibition suggests.
Specialist schools are also represented. The establishment of mass schooling by the 1870 Education Act led to classes for deaf pupils through the Birmingham School Board. Yet these photographs only show one side of the schooling experience, and to a large extent an ideal intended by the teachers and institutions.
The Warwickshire Photographic Survey is now held by Birmingham Archives and Heritage, and is currently in the process of being digitised as part of the move to the new Library of Birmingham in 2013.
Image: children in the playground performing their drill exercises, by W. Woollaston. The children each have a set of dumb-bells.
Exhibition compiled by Patrick Haines.