A man who captured our town in pictures
THE super old Echo photograph we featured recently of the legendary Loughborough footballer Fred Sharman, who played for Leicester City and iconic Brush Sports FC, had an intriguing caption written the back.
The pencilled note stated that the 1947 photo was taken for the Echo by “H Woods” of 19 Edward Street, Loughborough, and the picture is dated 1947.
We had no record of H Woods, except for a number of similarly captioned photos from around that time, so we asked our readers if anybody knew who he was.
So imagine our delight when none other his great granddaughter, Rachael Hayhurst, a keen photographer herself, got in touch with some great pictures.
Rachael e-mailed to say: “Harold Woods, was my great grandfather.
“He originally worked at the Genatosan factory in Loughborough, and did photography as a hobby, but later worked as a free lance photographer for the Echo, covering all sorts of local events in the town.
“He never had a car, and used to walk everywhere heavily laden with his huge camera equipment and tripod. He used to develop all his own photos in his darkroom, which was a small building at the back of what was the Station Hotel, and I believe the building still stands. He used large glass plates, which he would run under the tap in the darkroom to clean, and the room was lit only by gaslight.
“My uncle (Harold’s grandson) was 13 when Harold died, and still remembers the darkroom, and also accompanying Harold on a photography trip in a van with an Echo reporter, to photograph the floods in Loughborough in the early 1950s.
“Harold died in 1959, but his love of photography lives on, as it’s something I also love, although these days I work digitally rather than with glass plates and a darkroom.”