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The Shakespeare Birthplace Trust Records Office holds many thousands of photographs of Stratford-upon-Avon and the surrounding district, dating from the late 1850s to the present day. Copies can be supplied of most of these images
 Click here for Photographic Price List (94.76 KB)
The principal finding aid is a card index, arranged topographically. It begins with STRATFORD-UPON-AVON, and continues with other parishes in Warwickshire, arranged alphabetically. Non-Warwickshire views follow, subdivided alphabetically first by county and then by parish.
The large number of Stratford views are subdivided by street, and, if necessary, by individual properties within a street and even by rooms within a house: thus photographs of the kitchen in Shakespeare's Birthplace are found under:
STRATFORD-UPON-AVON; Henley Street; Shakespeare's Birthplace; kitchen
Certain Stratford photographs do not lend themselves to subdivision in this way and have been grouped after the streets in the following order:
River
Bridges
Theatre
Holy Trinity Church
Railways
Canal
Hamlets: - Bishopton
- Clopton
- Shottery
- Welcombe
Events: - Mop Fair
- Shakespeare Birthplace Trust
- Shakespeare Birthday Celebrations
- Royal Visits
- Royal Celebrations
- Floods
- Shakespeare Conference
- Other occasions
Biography: - portraits not exclusively S/A, arranged alphabetically
Each card in the index, in addition to a brief description of the photograph and its date, gives a reference for the location of the original image. However, for ease of reference and for conservation purposes, copies of these originals are being assembled in the files in the Reading Room, arranged in the same order as the index. Readers wishing to see photographs which have not yet been copied into these files should order them on the 'document request' slips.
Readers should also bear in mind that there are many photographic images, some dating back to the nineteenth century, which today survive only in printed books and magazines. Some of the earliest have been copied and incorporated into the current index but coverage will inevitably be incomplete for some years to come.
The index also includes entries for lantern slides and colour transparencies. Some of the early lantern slide images have been transferred onto paper and placed in the main topographical sequence, but many have not. Staff will advise on consulting these collections.
Two major collections, from the firm of Joe Cocks Studio, 1970s-'80s, and the Stratford-upon-Avon Herald, are not yet included in the index. It is, however, possible to trace particular sets of negatives from the firms' own indexes provided the date and/or the name of the commissioner is known.
Works of particular photographers or other photographic firms can, in many cases, be traced through the 'Special Collections' (SC) catalogue. Thus, photographs taken by William Badams of Stratford in the late nineteenth century are listed at SC 52 and postcards issued by Photo-Precision at SC 29. The original images are also preserved as sets and can be made available on request: modern copies are to be found in the topographical files kept in the Reading Room.
Photographs of the Royal Shakespeare Theatre, and of its theatrical productions and other related activities, form part of the Shakespeare Centre Library collections, and are best consulted there.
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; "Clopton Bridge circa 1865")
; "Shakespeare Memorial Theatre c.1896")
; "Mop Fair c.1910")
