Casgliadau Arlein

Salted paper print, from Calotype negative. View of Church Hill, Ilfracombe, and Holy Trinity church.

This view of Church Hill, Ilfracombe looks up towards the ancient parish church of Holy Trinity and was taken prior to the 1860s restoration by John Hayward. In 1845 Calvert Jones joined Henry Fox Talbot on photographic excursions to York, Bristol and Devon, and this image may possibly have been taken on one of those trips. The street is lined on one side with a mixture of cottages and houses. With the arrival of the railway at this end of the town in 1874 many of these buildings were demolished and replaced with more substantial buildings in order to impress visitors to the town! (Source: 'Pastures Green and Dark Satanic Mills: The British Passion for Landscape', 2015)