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SERVICES

How It Works

Organising a ThisSpotThen historical project is simple. Simply email or ring me, and I'll arrange a time to drop in to your premises to talk through your preferences. Typically, this first meeting takes around 30 minutes, after which I'll begin the research immediately; usually starting at the local archives.

 

The story of your building is already there, simply waiting to be discovered. Each project is different, but the process is always a fascinating mix of academic research, and detective story. I travel all over Great Britain, and tend to stay in an area doing the primary research for around three initial days.  During the process, I'll also give you a first draft for you to check, and I'll undertake one revision free of charge if you want anything changed or added at that point.

 

Please note that a colour (watercolour) picture takes a substantially longer time to complete than a greyscale drawing, and prices take that into account. (See 'Gallery' page)

 

The Finished Product

Depending on product, the process takes between a week and two months. For the largest TST jobs (see 'All Portrait' and 'All Landscape' in the gallery), the final result will be a modern photograph, an artwork depicting the site at a point in the past chosen by you, and a thorough essay of up to 2000 words detailing the history of the spot, the locality, and your building's place within both.

 

Every aspect of the process can be amended according to your wishes. For example, a commission from the Victoria Gardens pub in Sunderland specified a particular interest in the building's past as a villa at the centre of early Victorian pleasure gardens, and asked me to replace the modern photograph with a map showing these gardens at the time.

 

Once you're satisfied with the finished research, the documents are then mounted and framed, according to your preference of colours, and the complete piece is yours to display.

 


 

Case Study- The Alum House
At the core of ThisSpotThen is the belief that history comprises much more than tales of kings and battles. Every person and place has a story, and every spot holds centuries of events that,  when traced, reveal an endlessly fascinating slice of the past.
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An example of this is the TST research undertaken for the Alum House pub, in South Shields, in 2009. It was known that the building was old, but its origin, and that of its name, was lost to the owner. My research took me back to the 1760s, and the possibility that the pub could be the oldest building in the town. I discovered it once formed part of the extensive glassworks of the Cookson family, a huge complex which had produced glass for the Crystal Palace in 1851. Alum was a stabilising ingredient, which was fundamental to the process. However, no research can treat a building in isolation; I found that the area around had once been a labyrinth of alleyways leading to the river. Stories of ferrymen stretched back to Medieval times, and more modern tales mentioned a 'haunted mansion' nearby. I discovered that a pub which formerly stood opposite had held within it remnants of an extensive Georgian mansion, whilst the Alum House itself had been a pub twice previously. The building had later been taken over by the Tyne Dock Engineering company as offices, and was also used as the regional headquarters of the Home Guard ('Dad's Army') during the Second World War.
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