Warminster Museum Column

This photograph was taken in about 1902.

The Ship Inn and the nearby houses had very recently been cleared away and the new access road constructed. Mr Webb is still using the old scalloped blinds that were on the shop under the previous owner of the drapery business and the Athenaeum is advertising Gustave Roselles.

Gustave Roselles was not on the entertainment circuit very long and he does not appear to have worked in England in 1903. He was an illusionist and his special blockbuster was to behead a volunteer. There are no reports that anybody actually lost their head.

This picture is copied from a postcard, and it is coloured. Commercially practical coloured photography was not available to Mr Coates, who published this and a number of other coloured postcards around 1902, so he must have been employing someone to add colour to every postcard in this special range. Mr Coates published the Warminster Journal and the business later became Coates and Parker – still in business in Market Place.

The big streetlamp beside the horse trough, shows how modern Warminster had become. It is an electric light, a major advance over the small gas lights, also in the picture.

Like so many of the photographs in the museum collection, this photograph is full of interest. Much of the interest lies in comparing closely dated pictures, because they show the development of the town. Some, like this one, have their unique interest. The advertising board appears to be throwing a shadow on the Athenaeum wall. This is just as expected on a bright day. The colouring artist seems to have brushed away almost every other shadow.