Around 120 years ago - some time after 1890 - a distant forebear of mine had a photograph of himself taken in a Victorian cemetery. The picture shows him laying flowers at a tombstone, dedicated to various members of the Wilkinson branch of the family.
He was most probably a chap called Walter Wilkinson, married to my great great aunt Emily. But I've no idea where the cemetery is.
But, oddly, I do know something about the photographer. The picture was taken by photographer A.W. Lee, of 118 Stroud Green Road, London N. And the site of A.W. Lee's studio is just a stone's throw from where I live now. So I have to imagine my great-great relative getting off a horse-drawn bus down the road from my house in about 1890, and going to see the photographer to pay him, or perhaps pick up the print. The house isn't there any more - it was bombed.
Good old Walter Wilkinson. I think I might have liked him - he has a place in family lore. Emily and he were joint licensees of a famous London pub, the Olde King Lud, at Ludgate Circus in central London. It was a nice old Victorian boozer, which I visited once or twice when I worked as a journalist in Fleet Street - it had fine carvings of King Lud above the doors. The carvings are still there, but it's a sandwich bar now - another lost bit of London history. Photos below - then and now.
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