Claire Vaughan
As featured in a new book, the National Trust’s Hardman collection is a major photographic resource for family historians who have links to Liverpool. An ongoing project is making even more of it accessible, says Claire Vaughan
Claire was our deputy editor for many years, and is now a freelance writer and editor. She manages our ‘Q&A’ section, and this month investigates the Hardmans
The tiny figure of a schoolboy – bag slung over his shoulder, head bowed – trudges into a murky landscape of drab streets and tightly packed houses. Above him, the skyline is a forest of cranes among which a vast ship gleams hypnotically: white and pristine. Where Great Ships Are Built (reproduced on the left) was taken in 1950 by the photographer Edward Chambré Hardman, and captures the near completion of the Ark Royal at the shipyards in Birkenhead.
It’s a striking photograph that has earned a place among the other curiosities in the National Trust’s newly released celebration of the artefacts it cares for, 125 Treasures From the Collections of the National Trust ( bit.ly/nt-125treasures). The plan was to release the book last year to coincide with the trust’s 125th anniversary, but the pandemic meant that it had to be delayed.
An Outstanding Collection
Where Great Ships Are Built is part of the outstanding – and huge – Hardman collection currently housed at Liverpool Records Office, which includes some 140,000 items – from glass-plate negatives to business ledgers and personal papers. The trust also cares for the house that was once the photographer’s studio: the Hardmans’ House at 59 Rodney Street in Liverpool. In partnership with Liverpool Records Office, the trust is currently engaged in a two-year project, Hardmans Unpacked, to add about 6,000 items to the 2,000 that are already digitised and available online,
carry out conservation of the material, and make the collection more physically accessible to members of the public.
Hardman was born in 1898 in Foxrock, Dublin. He was a keen photographer from an early age, and later found time to take photographs using an Eastman Kodak No 3 camera while on active service in the Himalayas with the 8th Gurkha Rifles. It was during this period that he met Captain Kenneth Burrell, whose dream it was to set up a photographic studio in his home town of Liverpool. On returning, the two men went into business together, opening Burrell & Hardman at 51a Bold Street in the city in 1923.
Family Business
Hardman took on Margaret Mills as his assistant, who later became his wife. In 1929, Burrell left the business and the Hardmans continued it alone, setting up the premises in Rodney Street in 1949. They also opened a studio in Chester. But for Hardman, it wasn’t just a business, as his legacy reveals.
“You can really see Hardman’s passion for photography in his photographs,” says Michelle
Yunque, senior collections and house officer at the Hardmans’ House. “We have such a wealth of information about his life and his photography here – not just the photographs themselves, but background information that brings them to life.”
Hardman’s photographs span a wide range of subjects: “Hardman did a lot of portraiture and was also commissioned by companies, such as British Insulated Cables in Prescot. He took photographs inside the company’s factory, but he wasn’t just documenting. He made the inside of those factories look really beautiful. He was also the official production photographer at the Liverpool Playhouse from the 1920s.”
Hardman captured precious moments from his and Margaret’s holidays on celluloid too. In one famous photograph, diners at an outdoor café in Provence recline in the dappled sunlight, while another iconic image shows Margaret wearing a bathing costume and swimming cap in a diving pose that vividly evokes the stylised art-deco figures of the period. Back home, like many photographers before and after him, he pictured the everyday comings and goings on the streets of Liverpool. These snapshots