Unofficial Christ's Hospital Forum

There is a photo for sale on eBay,
http://www.ebay.de/itm/qw-136-Christs-H ... Swh-1W1tr1

Just out of curiosity I'm trying to date it.
After 1930 because the New Science School and Dom Lib are there. Before 1964, because the rear extensions to the houses aren't there. In fact, it must be long before 1964, because the trees in the avenue are small; the track appears not to be there (the site is occupied by a football pitch); there are rugby pitches on Big Side, which there never were in my day. 1930s? 1940s?
Suggest September as time of year: trees in leaf, rugby pitches.

Very hard to judge really.

I note the vendor appears to be in Germany, AND the spelling of Christ's, (ChrOist's) seems a little strange.

Could it have been originally a Luftwaffe intelligence photo, I ask myself ?

I think the spelling comes from the vendor, but he's based in Britain. Sorry, I linked you to the German eBay page. However, the date would fit.

The size of the trees along the avenue should help to pin it down. Anyone know when they were planted?

Some more to browse here

http://www.ebay.co.uk/sch/i.html?_from= ... o&_sacat=0

Continuing the detective work: note what appears to be the shadow of an aircraft on the facade of Mid B. This cannot be the aircraft from which the picture was taken, which suggests a formation.

The lime trees in the Quarter-mile are quite well grown, but the sequoias in West Gun Copse road are still fairly small. No people are visible. The time is fairly early morning, the direction and length of the shadows suggests autumn.

Can't make out the athletics track which appears to have a pitch in the middle. When was that laid?

The Avenue appears to have been planted at least three times. 1) When the school was built, 2) in the late 1920s (see Plumley's CH in Photographs, vol. I, p. 53 'Tree Felling in the Eastern Avenue'), and 3) after the 1987 hurricane. There is another picture in Plumley, on p. 58, showing the Western Avenue seen from the Water Tower, said to be 'immediately before the Second World War'. Here the trees are almost exactly the same size as they are in the eBay photo. Given that the latter appears to have been taken by one aircraft in a formation, I think JR was probably right to speculate it was a wartime photo.

Although the avenue trees at the east end (Lamb to Prep) are clear those on the western end of the avenue are close to invisible sugggesting a date not long after the second planting.
There are rugby pitches on big side where in the '50's we played cricket.
I look for and don't see any signs of war - insufficient posts to stop enemy aircraft landing (as we saw over the railway bridge in the '50's - rugby posts are too far apart to be effective) and no signs of food growing which I would expect in a wartime situation.
In a wartime situation with a shortage of materials would it be approppriate to photograph a school which had no strategic significance?
I suggest that the photo was taken before the war

I think you will find that the photo was taken by "The Aerial Photographic Company", and used as a postcard (8225A) as depicted on page 45 of Clifford Jones (Barnes B 1) Postcard booklet, which is part of the CH Heritage series.
No date is mentioned in the booklet, but I am sure Clifford has more details.

Clifford's reply

The photograph being discussed on the forum is from a postcard produced by The Aerial Photographic Co, which was in business 1937/1938. There are numerous postcard aerial views of CH, from different companies, some in the 1920s, others late 1940s on, e.g. a similar but later view by Aero Pictorial Ltd postally used in 1955. The value of the postcards is £2 or £3 each.

I welcome any possible further publicity for my Heritage booklet, Postcards, available from the CH museum, see the Heritage publications page on http://www.christs-hospital.org.uk

So just pre WWII then.

The Preparatory School classroom block was constructed c 1937-38 and this does not appear in the photograph. The Art school car park was certainly
there before the war. The absence of any parked cars suggests it must have been the early nineteen thirties following the opening of the New Science School block.

I was wondering about the Prep classroom block. What actually is the building behind the Prep in the photograph? Was it demolished to make way for the classroom block?

The absence of cars may just be because it was very early morning. How many cars would have been 'based' at CH c. 1935?

michael scuffil wrote: The lime trees in the Quarter-mile are quite well grown, but the sequoias in West Gun Copse road are still fairly small. No people are visible. The time is fairly early morning, the direction and length of the shadows suggests autumn.

The P O Path runs very marginally east of due north - too little to worry about.

If you look at the line of trees on Big Side at the bottom of the photo using a roller ruler you will see that their shadows run at almost the same direction as the P O Path, in fact virtually the same deviation as the PO Path is to due north. Therefore I suggest that the photograph was taken pretty close to or slightly after midday GMT. I concur about the length of the shadows and the foliage seems fully developed so yes, I agree, autumn. If we have someone ex RAF Photo Rec he / she could probably give you far more info.
I don't see humans; meal time, lesson time or holidays?

I see that you are right about the direction of the shadows, they're pointing slightly west of north. So the sun must be slightly east of south. I'm curious about the length of the shadows, though: they're considerably longer than the things that cast them, so the sun must be (well) below 45%, which around noon would not happen till late October, by which time I'd expect less foliage... Anyway, it's during term time, so the total absence of visible human activity is slightly odd.