With the rise of photography from the 1850s onwards, rural life in Somerset was recorded with a vivid immediacy that had never been possible before. Professional and amateur photographers in towns and villages captured Somerset people both in studio portraits and in thousands of informal images that reflected a way of life so soon to be gone.
Tom Mayberry’s talk will introduce us to a small part of this remarkable photographic legacy and to what it can tell us about a world we have lost.
Tom Mayberry is the former CEO of the South West Heritage Trust having held the position since the Trust’s creation in 2014. He retired at the end of 2023 after 43 years working in South West Heritage.