Lyme Regis features in “Britain’s First Photo Album”, a new BBC2 series
Lyme Regis and The Town Mill were featured on Friday March 16th at 6.30 p.m. in a new BBC2 series, “Britain’s First Photo Album”.
Filming for The Town Mill section took place last September and involved volunteer millers Steve White and Martin Roundell Greene, pictured here by the water wheel.
Presented by John Sergeant, “Britain's First Photo Album” is a 10 part, 30-minute series on the outstanding achievement of Francis Frith, the pioneer Victorian photographer. He undertook a massive project to photograph as much of the United Kingdom as he could during the second half of the 19th century.
The complete series ran from Mon 12th to Fri 23rd March on weekday evenings at 6.30 p.m. on BBC2. If you visit http://www.francisfrith.com/lyme-regis/photos/ you can see 190 photos of Lyme Regis dating from the 1890s.
Each episode focuses on four places, all inspired by a Frith photo so over the series, forty of Frith's best images will be showcased, along with another forty new photos taken by John Sergeant. The Frith Collection is a nationally important private photographic archive containing over 365,000 photographs depicting some 7,000 towns and villages throughout Britain forming a unique record of Britain. The series is accompanied by a book of the same title with a long section on Lyme Regis and The Town Mill.
From Saturday 31st March, The Town Mill will open six days a week (closed Mondays) from 11 a.m. to 4 p.m. Volunteers are always needed at The Town Mill to work in the mill, the shop, gallery or the garden. Call Mags Osborne on 01297 443579 for details. Volunteers and their families are entitled to a free tour of the mill and a 10% discount on all shop goods.
Kevin Benfield, The Town Mill
Published on 16/04/2012.
