ALISON TAYLOR - THE RELHAN COLLECTIOn — THE CAMBRIDGE CRITIQUE

Ordered before his wife’s death and only 20 cm high these brasses lie in Barton Church . They show John Martin of Woodhurst who purchased Burwash manor in 1573 and his widow, Margaret (d. 1602),

Two hundred years ago Richard Relhan, a local tradesman in Cambridge, took up drawing as a hobby that allowed him to explore south Cambridgeshire and to record its historic sites. Between 1797 and 1838 he drew churches, houses, grave monuments (Anglo-Saxon to nineteenth century), heraldry, village views and crosses and many other items, all in great detai like the tiny brass figures above). He was recording churches before Victorian ‘restoration’ ( some might say carefully re- making) began, historic houses were soon to be demolished or radically improved, and views of the rural landscape, where open fields were destined for the savage practice by private landlord - and much lamented by the poet John Clare - of ‘enclosure’ with thorn hedges

It was a fast changing world that he captured. When he died in 1844 his local vicar arranged for the pile of over 350 drawings to be taken to the newly-formed Museum of Archaeology and Anthropology, where they remained until taken to the Fitzwilliam Museum then Cambridge University Library, where they were rarely seen. Now Cambridge University, has digitised them after a truly heroic piece of research - and photography - by archaeologist and writer Alison Taylor. She has spent the past two years snapping the contemporary sites (for comparison) The result is a fascinating document of what is most interesting locally in the historical sphere -, and are now available for all to see and use. Examples include this rural view of Barton (below) Chesterton’s magnificent tower and a medieval coffin, probably from clay quarries at the bottom of Hertford Street in Cambridge.

The drawings are cleverly presented - the historic Relhan drawing next to the contemporary 2021 view. With the click of a key you can flick from today to two hundred years ago in whatever area , church or monument you choose, thanks to the exhaustingly painstaking work of Alison Taylor who trudged the countryside in Lockdown, oblivious to closed doors and difficult access, snapping the angle of historic houses, ancient church brasses and distant landscaped once captured by Richard Relhan. Many of these historic images have never been seen by anyone yet they provide a unique picture of our region and landscape over the past two hundred years. How? The two images ( one the original drawing by Richard Relhan and one the recent photograph by Alison Taylor) are a sudden magical transportation by means of modern technology - and the digitising power of the University Library team - but most of all to the dedication of one doughty individual modern day recorder of our local world without whom these pictures would have been forever a closed book.