THE 



ESSEX NATURALIST: 



BEING TH|-. 



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FOR 1903-1904. 



(VOLUME XIII.) 



PROPOSALS FOR A PHOTOGRAPHIC AND 

 PICTORIAL SURVEY OF ESSEX. 



By ALBERT E. BRISCOE, B.Sc, A.R.C.Sc, i^c, Principal of the 

 Municipal Technical Institute, ]\'cst Hani. 



[Read January Si-sV, 1903.] 



THERE is but little need in these times to point out the 

 value to historical students of contemporary pictorial 

 records : every one is familiar with the interest that attaches to 

 old prints and drawings. A splendid example of the way 

 they may be used to illuminate history and to give valuable 

 information regarding the social life of the people is the well- 

 known illustrated edition of John Richard Green's Short History 

 of the English People. 



No books give us such a vivid understanding of the social 

 life of the Eighteenth Century as is given by the prints of 

 Hogarth ; to our descendants, pictures like Frith's " Derby 

 Day " and " Railway Station," will be equally valuable. 



We live in a time of great changes ; probably the changes in 

 the appearance of the country during the next fifty years will be 

 even more marked than those of the last fifty. Old customs 

 are fast dying out ; old houses are disappearing, and no record 

 of either is being left behind. 



Those of us who have lived in Metropolitan Essex during 

 the last decade know this only too well. However, even yet 

 there are bits of the old villages buried away in out of the way 

 corners of the new towns that are springing up like mushrooms 

 in " London over the border." 



Within the last five years, old Rokeby House has disappeared 



