Say cheese…
The name Leslie Overend will mean nothing to most, but to Morleians, Overend is synonymous with photography. He was a social historian, but he didn’t realise it at the time, being a journalist bitten by the photography bug. No-one is quite sure how big his collection is being in the tens of thousands (although Stephen White will know more than most, having inherited it eighteen years ago and he is still cataloguing it!) There is a regular feature in the local rag, where pictures are put up and readers are asked to comment if they recognise anyone. This often turns up some real gems in the letters pages and always gives pleasure to those who benefit from the nostalgia.I’ve only lived here fifteen years so the people are rarely familiar, but the places often are as well as how things have changed (or stayed the same). Morley is an ordinary English town and a fairly unremarkable one, but to locals it is rather special.
There is now a website devoted to Leslie Overend, although it only features dozens of prints at present, only a fraction of a percent of the collection.
There was another chap and I can’t remember the name, in the Whitby area around 1900. Such photos are so vital to get the feel of the times.
Comment by jameshigham — December 8, 2007 @ 7:40 pm
What a wonderful site. It is this sort of site that makes the internet worthwhile.
Comment by jams o donnell — December 8, 2007 @ 8:48 pm
James and Jams, there are no doubt hundreds of similar people all over Britain with similar collections but they don’t always get preserved. This is a very generalist collection but unique by its breadth if not depth.
Indeed our local hisorical society frequently despairs at what can end up in a skip after a house clearance.
I’m in the will of a future benefactor for his extensive and irreplacable theatre collection archive. He is leaving some furniture to the Theatre Museum but all his books and research to me. I have to say I’m dreading that it will happen in the next ten years as the house isn’t big enough and I’d have to break the collection up. I then have to determine a successor as well, assuming I outlive him.
Comment by Shades — December 8, 2007 @ 11:02 pm
Photos of localities are always interesting because you can see how the place has changed. What a service photographers like Overend do for their communities.
Comment by Welshcakes Limoncello — December 9, 2007 @ 7:02 am
Welshcakes- you say what a service he did, but he was the press photographer. He may have been freelance though, as I don’t think Johnson Press has the copyright. For a man, that is the ideal career- just imagine getting paid for indulging your hobby!
It seems he took pictures of trains as well so he was probably a steam buff.
Comment by Shades — December 9, 2007 @ 9:00 am
I’m the bloke responsible for setting up the website to Leslie Overend, former freelance photographer in Morley.
I was left the collection - and copyright to the negs - in Les’s will when he died in 1989.
The chap James Higham refers to (Whitby photographer) is Frank Meadow Sutcliffe, but he was around way before Leslie.
Leslie’s collection runs to tens of thousands of negs. Just sorting them out into some sort of order was a mammoth task.
Even now many of the old glass plates, taken before 1954/55, remain without captions.
Les did indeed take many pictures of steam trains - but sold the vast majority of his negs to the National Railway Museum.
They reside in York as the Leslie Overend Collection - I think you can get more detail from the museum’s website.
If anyone would like more information about Leslie’s collection, please email me at info@leslieoverend.com
SteveW
Comment by stephen white — December 11, 2007 @ 10:09 am
Steve, great of you to drop by and add to the comments with the authority of having lived it for so long. I have occasionally thought about responding via the Morley Obtiser but I gather that the images I am interested in (New Pavilion Interiors) have already been searched for in vain by others. I had seen LO credited with various train photos around the web but I hadn’t made the connection with York and didn’t know there was a collection of his in there.
Comment by Shades — December 11, 2007 @ 2:34 pm