- 'Cock on flowerpots' Hole Farm, Black Torrington 1974 by James Ravilious (© Beaford Arts)
"one of the great artistic and documentary achievements of photography in the 20th century"
The Independent
" … a unique body of work, unparalleled at least in this country for its scale and quality"
Barry Lane, Secretary General, Royal Photographic Society, April 1998
"These photographs, anything but nostalgic, reveal the persistence of an England one had thought long gone"
Alan Bennett
The 'Old Archive' goes digital
NOW ONLINE: photographs of north Devon 1870-1940
As well as taking his own photographs, James Ravilious and his colleagues also collected older photographs of the region from the late 19th and early 20th centuries.
For the first time Beaford Arts is making available this unique 8,000-strong collection of old images (and which James and colleagues termed the 'Old Archive') as a searchable online database.
We hope local historians and north Devon folk will help us fill in the gaps in the record - each image has a link to "Add Information", so do feel free to share anything you can add to the histories originally noted by James and his team.
James Ravilious's Beaford Archive
80,000 rural images of the 1970s and 1980s
At its inception in 1971, The Beaford Archive sought to document north Devon's land and people as the 20th Century moved towards its closing chapters.
This unique record of the 1970s and 1980s is largely the creation of one man. Shortly after the Archive began, artist and photographer James Ravilious (1939-1999) was asked to take “a few photos” for the collection. Seventeen years later, he had created a uniquely detailed portrait of a corner of England on the brink of change.
Order Ravilious prints or books online
Visiting the Beaford Archive
The Archive itself is in fact a vast collection of negatives. As you’ll appreciate, these need expert handling and preservation – some are already suffering from fungal growth. For that reason, unfortunately the Archive isn’t open to public and is stored in atmosphere-controlled conditions in the North Devon Record Office.
We are working towards the longer-term aim of making all of James' work available online. For now, several online gallery pages showcasing the range of his work can be reached via links on the left of this page.
James Ravilious's 1998 Royal Photographic Society retrospective exhibition "An English Eye" is currently on tour to mark the seventieth anniversary of his birth and the tenth anniversary of his death. It features a number of the most important images in the Beaford Archive along with several privately-held images, and is loaned by Robin Ravilious with the support of Devon County Council. It can be seen at:
Burton Gallery, Bideford - from 28th May 2009 to 19th June 2009
National Theatre, London - from 13th July to 13th September 2009