I came across this in the Bodleian Library today:
It is ‘Welch’s Album of Portsmouth and Southsea Views’, printed in Germany, and sold by R. and W. Welch, booksellers, of the Arcade, Landport.
Inside, there is a concertina of images, including this one of Southsea castle
And this view of The Govenor’s House – the building was a casualty of bombing during WWII:
What’s odd about these images is that they are not photographs, but drawings OF photographs, and at quite a late date, too – the images post-date the building of the Town Hall (1890), but pre-date the breaking up of HMS Euphrates in 1895:
Why create a drawing instead of reproducing the photograph? One answer may be that the images were being modified, perhaps to make them more ‘artistic’. Compare, for example, the drawing on the left of the Floating Bridge with the original on the right:
The…
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Archaeology Archives Oxford 