Originally, photography was really no more than a hobby for relatively wealthy people. When did it begin to be practised in High Wycombe? Rev Edward Arnold Although no-one has been formally established as the first to take a photograph in the Wycombe area, a leading candidate must be the Rev Edward Arnold, the curate of St Peters Church in Loudwater. Originally from Ireland, he lived with his wife Mary and two daughters Edith and Agnes in Loudwater Vicarage in Back Lane, now Kingsmead Rd.
On the SWOP website www.swop.org.
uk there are a series of nine stereo-images taken by the Rev Arnold of his extended family and of two different scenes in Loudwater in c.1860. Judging from the estimated age of his daughter Edith in one of the photographs, that particular one was taken in about 1856.
It is not known if the Rev Arnold took any more photographs than those shown on the SWOP website, but he died in the city of Bonn, at that time in Prussia, on January 29, 1865. Later in the nineteenth century local photography enthusiasts formed the High Wycombe and District Amateur Photographic Society, the name being changed to The Wycombe Camera Club in October 1894. Lewis Broughton Lewis Broughton was born in 1842, the son of William Broughton, a stone mason living and working in Oxford Road, High Wycombe.
Lewis continued the family trade on the same site, building a large and successful business as a Stone and Monumental Mason in the town - indeed, a mark of his success was the widespread ap.