History of the Spanton Jarman Project

Introduction

In 1998 the Society received a significant collection of photographic negatives from Michael Jarman, who asked the members to do all they could to preserve it as a unique source for local history. This important collection of some 4000 glass photographic negatives incorporates the work of three local photographic businesses. The pictures taken mostly between 1860 and before the Second World war, show people and places in Bury St. Edmunds and the surrounding area during that time.

The negatives have been safely stored in the environmentally controlled conditions in the Bury Record Office since 1975.

The Society’s work

The Society is committed to preserving and promoting the negatives, and has successfully completed two Lottery funded projects to assist these objectives. The first was to clean and repackage the collection, and the second, to digitise the 1023 images of Bury St. Edmunds and create this website to show them.

For more details of this work, see Research

Background to the Collection

William Spanton had established his ‘Repository of Arts and West Suffolk Photographic Establishment’ at 16 Abbeygate Street by 1864. As well as his artistic and photographic work, he was also a house decorator, plumber, paperhanger, glazier, carver, gilder and painter. However, he soon gave up his other concerns, except framing and gilding, to concentrate on the photographic work. Sadly, he died at the age of 47 in January 1870.

His son, William Silas Spanton, who was then an art student in London, returned to Bury, where he ran the business successfully until his retirement in 1901. As well as photography, he retained his interest in art and copied many pictures in local collections, and also had a good business as an optician.

As far as can be seen, W.S. Spanton did not do nearly so much topographical work as the other established local photographers, John William Clarke, and his son, John Palmer Clarke. They had established their business on Angel Hill, in a house on the site where the Borough Offices are now, by about 1868. Their advertisements make frequent references to their large collection of local views.

In 1890, Harry Isaac Jarman became apprenticed to John Palmer Clarke and remained with him after qualifying until the retirement of W.S. Spanton in 1901. At this point, Mr H.I. Jarman bought Spanton’s business and its negatives. Soon afterwards, in 1903, when John Palmer Clarke moved to Cambridge, H.I Jarman bought the extensive collection of negatives of local views which had been created by that firm. Later, the business was continued by his son, Oswald Jarman, who was a member of the Past & Present Society and served on its committee for many years.

The other glass negatives in the collection are from the Jarman’s business, and all but a few were taken before 1939.