Alexander's Album

Picturing the Past: NarrowBoat, Winter 2006

David Blagrove

David Blagrove looks through Walter Alexander’s photographs of Stoke Bruerne and Blisworth

Walter Alexander of Blisworth took photographs of a wide variety of subjects for over 70 years. Living so close to the canal, a good number of these depicted the immediate locality, particularly the tunnel and Stoke Bruerne, and we are delighted to be able to publish a small selection of these in Narrowboat, by courtesy of his daughter Audrey Evans and his grandson David Evans who scanned the original negatives. Walter was born in 1886 and his first camera was homemade from a cardboard box 3in square with a pinhole for the aperture! He graduated in stages to his ultimate aim, a ‘half-plate’ Thornton Pickard Imperial camera and tripod which he used for the rest of his life, taking well over 5000 plate negatives.…