Walter Rose (1857-1954) spent his working life in the village of Westcott near Dorking in Surrey, a peaceful backwater of rural activity beneath the North Downs. From his humble premises in Westcott Street Walter plied his photographer's trade working mainly for local businesses and land owners but occasionally venturing as far afield as Cornwall and Derbyshire.Walter and his wife Ellen had no children but raised a niece, Dolly, whose mother had died in childbirth.

Walter doted on Dolly judging by the charming studies of the young girl with her pets and the simple toys of the Edwardian age. Dolly never married and stayed with her Uncle Walter until his death in 1954 at the age of 97, so inheriting his collection of 900 glass-plate negatives which had been stored for the past 25 years in the wooden garden shed that had served as a darkroom. Local historian and friend of the Roses, David Knight, was asked by Dolly to store the precious plates in his attic and there they remained until 1986 when Keith Harding undertook the task of proof printing the entire collection, many of which had not been seen for 90 years.

Now that the collection has been catalogued and , where possible,identified,these superb images are once again being made available to the public. Every photograph is individually hand-printed by Keith Harding straight from the original glass negative, carefully sepia-toned and finished with an acid-free ivory matte.

In addition to the Walter Rose images, Goodness Gracious is proud to be able to offer more than 60 very early photographs taken in Dorking by the Guildford photographer J.Chaplin around 1870 and collected by Ted Molyneux. As with the Walter Rose Collection, these images are hand-printed from the original glass-plate negatives.

Example pictures:

On the left-hand side of the screen are some example pictures from the Walter Rose collection, simply click on the image to see the full screen photograph.

Walter Rose Index:

You can view the plain-text version of the index on-screen, download the index in MS Word format or if you have one of the latest web-browsers then try our on-line searchable index.