The donation of a large quantity of photographs and other records relating to Hutchings Caravans, and its founder Bertram Hutchings, to the Caravan and Motorhome Club Collection at the National Motor Museum, Beaulieu, in 2015 has prompted a call for help with identification. The Hutchings company was a maker of high-quality, bespoke, caravans from c1911 to 1956.
Curator Angela Willis, and a team of volunteers have catalogued more than 1000 images with most taken by Hutchings himself, who was a member and Fellow of the Royal Photographic Society and life President of the Winchester Photographic Society. Willis told the Hampshire Chronicle: “We have this extraordinary collection of photographs, with a variety of models of caravans and cars, which we can identify with confidence. But often they are in settings which we cannot recognise. We would like help from the public in identifying these locations. They include city streets, mountainous landscapes and places by the sea.
“We are therefore putting series of these ‘mystery photos’ online in the hope that people will recognise where they were taken. We also want to share the collection with a wider audience and hope in the future to show more of it locally, so that the work of Bertram Hutchings becomes better known.
“The mystery photos will be gradually uploaded to the website Flickr, where we invite people to share their knowledge of places where the pictures may have been taken.”
Read more about the Hutchings Collection here: https://hampshirearchivestrust.co.uk/archive/introduction-to-archives/the-importance-of-archives-case-studies/bertram-hutchings-caravans/
The anonymous pictures will be uploaded to Flickr here: https://www.flickr.com/photos/camc_collection/albums/72157713446114721
Ms Willis can be reached here: https://nationalmotormuseum.org.uk/enquiries/contact-us/
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