Collection: Andor Gomme collection

Description

The collection contains about 30000 photographic prints, slides and negatives depicting towns and villages in England and Wales between about 1955 and 1990. The photographs were taken by architectural historian Andor Gomme (1930-2008) during his research into townscape. Apart from Bristol, which was the subject of one of his books and is well represented with images of 17th and 18th century buildings in the city, the collection primarily contains images of smaller historic towns, market towns and new towns.

The collection comprises: photographs mounted onto annotated A3 paper; 35mm strip negatives, unmounted photographs, and 35mm slides. The photographs are black and white, the slides are colour.

The significance of the collection is that Andor Gomme was recording townscapes at a time of redevelopment in town centres when many historic buildings were lost. His photographs include post World War II buildings, particularly if they had an impact on the historic townscape.

A handlist is available for each of the 10 series within this collection. A card index of slides and additional lists are available and these are described in series GOM01/17.

Archival History

The collection was acquired by the Historic England Archive in two parts, in 1998 and 2018.

Professor Andor H. Gomme (1930-2008) was Emeritus Professor of English Language and Architectural History at the University of Keele. He was a former chair of the Society for Architectural Historians of Great Britain and editor of its journal: Architectural History. He was co-author of 'The Architecture of Glasgow' (1968) and 'Bristol: An Architectural History' (1979). He was the grandson of historian, Sir Laurence Gomme (1853-1916).

Content

Rights

Source: Historic England Archive