Historic Photo: The Rows, Chester, England, about 1895.
These medieval-era buildings were captured in a magnificent photo from the very end of the 19th century.
This amazing photograph instantly gets your attention, I think, because it’s an unusual juxtaposition of different eras. Obviously taken at the end of the 19th century or beginning of the 20th–judging from the fashions of the people at the bottom I estimate it’s about 1895–the buildings depicted here are a mix of Tudor and earlier medieval styles, and are extraordinarily well-preserved. The color is artificial; this was colorized by hand (a “Photocrom” by the ever-dependable Detroit Photographic Company) but there’s still a lot of eye-popping detail. You want to walk right into the picture and expect to find yourself in a sepia-toned facsimile of the past, on this English street more than a century ago.
