The Lopping Saga

The WFS have had this photo dated, the report is as follows: As you are aware, it is difficult to date this sort of image very precisely but there are certain features here which can help. In general outdoor pictures like this often turn out to date from the 20th century, rather than the Victorian era. Outdoor photography was a very cumbersome process in the early photographic period and although professionals did occasionally work outdoors from the mid-19th century, such scenes often look rather staged and the backgrounds are often indistinct. A casual but realistic photograph like this has much more the appearance of a later ‘snapshot’: amateur photography was becoming more popular by the late 19th century and really took off in a significant way in the early 20th century following the introduction of the user-friendly Box Brownie camera in 1900. Usually dress gives the best clues as to the date of a photograph – often to within 5 or 10 years - but when the subject isn’t wearing regular ‘fashionable’ dress, close dating becomes much more difficult.

This elderly man – presumably a gardener or some sort of agricultural worker – wears practical garments suited to heavy outdoor work in a general style which varied according to personal preference and the job in hand but essentially didn’t change for decades. His trousers or breeches are tucked into his boots or gaiters and he wears what appears to be a cardigan-like garment over another jersey or shirt. Most important, from a dating viewpoint, is his peaked cloth cap. This style of headwear first appeared in the late-19th century, in around the 1880s, when it was worn mainly by sportsmen – cyclists, golfers etc. (though cricketers were already wearing a striped version). During the 1890s plain peaked caps began to enter everyday wear and for the first 40 years or so of the 20th century the cloth cap was synonymous with the working man (although it was also worn by the upper classes for country wear). I would estimate, then, that this photograph was taken towards the end of the 19th century or during the early 1900s.

To return to your main query, because of the style of this photograph and also the evidence of dress – mainly the cap, which was not known during the lifetime of Thomas Willingale (died c.1870) – unfortunately it cannot possibly represent this well-known local man whose efforts helped to preserve Epping Forest. It often emerges that a particular photograph has become associated, through tradition, with a famous personality, partly because, understandably, people like to have a record of what he or she looked like and may latch on to an appropriate-looking image. (Local museums can even fall into this kind of trap and may use inaccurate images to illustrate their records or exhibitions). However, sometimes there is no provenance to support the identification and accurate dating may well prove that it couldn’t possibly be represent the person in question. This is of course disappointing and frustrating, but usually researchers agree that it is more important to establish the true facts. Perhaps this man was, instead, one of Thomas’s sons or nephews whom you mentioned?

Subsequently to the above, we now believe this is a photo of William Willingale (http://www.willingale.org/tng/getperson.php?personID=I0378&tree=01) one of Thomas's sons.