A local man photographed by WJJ Bolding

A gifted pioneer who took some of the earliest photographs of north Norfolk people and places will be remembered and celebrated in a talk next week.

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The Arts Council of Great Britain once described the portrait work of William Johnson Jennis Bolding as being “among the most powerful in the history of photography,” but his name is today largely unknown.

Richard Jefferson, whose late wife Pauline was Bolding’s great great niece, hopes to correct that with a heavily-illustrated book on his life and work in the future, and a talk to The Friends of the Norwich Museums on Wednesday, February 15, at Norwich Castle, starting at 2.30pm.

Mr Jefferson, 70, from Holt, will include in his talk details of Bolding’s connections with Norwich School artists including John Middleton.

Bolding (1815-1899), a well-off landowner, also found time to paint and carry out archaeology, discovering a Roman bottle kiln in his home village of Weybourne in 1857.

Much of his photography dates from the mid to late 1850s when the medium was still in its infancy and some of those his camera immortalised were ordinary Norfolk people born as far back as the 1770s.

“His images of Weybourne people, estate workers and family members are particularly important because the subject matter was so unusual,” said Mr Jefferson.

He is convinced that Bolding would have been a prolific letter writer but his research into his life has been made much more difficult because following the death of a family member in the early 20th century, a bonfire of items is said to have burned for a week.

“We have no idea how much of his work, diaries, journals, letters and so on may have gone up in smoke,” he said.

However, despite the lack of a single surviving letter, his body of work, from photographs, oil paintings, watercolours, wash drawings, silhouettes, etchings and archaeological notes, remained large.

“He was a truly amazing man, one of the most important early photographers on a national basis, and he deserves more recognition,” Mr Jefferson added.

Bolding, who never married, also owned the Weybourne Brewery and at one stage his estate included about 20 pubs all over north Norfolk, including Cromer, Sheringham, Gresham, Wells-next-the-Sea and Cley.

There are many unsubstantiated stories about his life, according to Mr Jefferson. One is that the reason Weybourne railway station, now used by North Norfolk Railway steam engines, stands well outside the village, is because Bolding refused to allow the line across his land.