This blog is written by David Fry, volunteer researcher. David says, ‘For a long time I have been fascinated by Coventry’s built environment and the various commercial photographers who have recorded it over the past 150+ years. Wingrave has been recognised for producing the earliest commercial photographs of Coventry and area but his name is not celebrated by the wider public.
Joseph Wingrave (July 1821 – Jan 1897)
For such a prominent Coventry citizen, Wingrave’s grave in the London Road Cemetery is, surprisingly, unmarked. It is the plot to the left of the marked grave of his memorably named son Vitruvius. He was born in Luton (once the global centre of the hat industry)
to a straw hat manufacturer and apprenticed to a chemist at nearby St Albans. By 1846 he had moved to Coventry and opened a chemist shop there at 4 High Street, where he was based for the next forty years. In 1850 he married Jane Wyatt from a middle class family in Leamington Spa. The reason that this otherwise unremarkable Coventry tradesman is still being remembered today is his early interest in photography at a time when only a few were able to master such a difficult and expensive process. The fact that Joseph was a knowledgeable chemist was an important factor. As a result he was able to add a valuable side-line to his main business by selling photographs of the city from the early 1860s. In 1854 he was already advertising ‘all preparations for photography including all preparations for Daguerreotype and photographic purposes’ and by 1857 was advertising the sale of the then fashionable ‘stereoscopic slides’.
It was not until 1860 that he advertised local stereoscopic slides of Coventry (St Michael’s), but there is nothing to indicate they were ones he had taken himself. There were press reports from 1861 of him taking photographs of repairs to the cathedral. He did register the copyright of a photograph of the nave of Holy Trinity in 1863. But only in 1865 was he advertising local cabinet photographs that he was claiming as his own. Certainly from this date, if not earlier, he was quite prolific in producing the fashionable smaller ‘carte de visite’ photographs of local views. Also surviving are portraits of local worthies that suggest he had a studio, though these photographs are greatly outnumbered by the topographical views. The complete reverse of this situation applies to all other professional photographers in Coventry for the remainder of the nineteenth century. They presumably felt it was easier and more lucrative to concentrate on studio work.
There are few survivals of Wingrave’s photographs of events; these were mainly of women performing as Lady Godiva. He is noted in the local newspapers as being the only photographer to photograph the 1866 Lady Godiva, and went on to cover the 1870, 1877 and 1883 representatives. He also ventured into Warwickshire capturing views, chiefly of churches, but sometime grand houses.
Although born into non-conformism he soon became a church warden for Holy Trinity church, possibly reflecting in the disproportionate amount of images he produced of Coventry’s main churches, though it could also be a popular subject matter for his customers.
The last advert for his chemist business was in 1885. There are no photographs that can be dated after the 1883 Lady Godiva, so it can be assumed he had retired from all commercial activity. He continued living in Coventry in Grosvenor Street at least to 1891, but his address when he died in 1897 was Allington House, St Peters Park, St Albans, the residence of his son and the town where he had started out on his career as a chemist.
Fortunately many of his plates have survived in the city archives thanks to their donation in the 1930s by his son Vitruvius.
