Winton Collection
Introduction and Index
I have been lucky enough to meet many fascinating characters through my interest in Shoreham history. June Stirling was particularly delightful. A lady in her 80s, lively, fun loving and well known to the Beach community, she and her husband had helped to set up the original Harbour Club. June was the granddaughter of William Edward Winton, organiser of the Shoreham regattas and carnivals of the early 1900s, and she still possessed an unlikely but wonderful collection of hundreds of photos, mostly taken by her father Bill, scraps and newspaper cuttings kept in three old, battered and disintegrating albums that shed cardboard crumbs and dust whenever their pages were opened.
These albums, June’s tales of the family and subsequent research uncovered a story of two colourful characters whose work contributed much to a 60-year chunk of Shoreham history, the resultant article of which can be seen on this website at http://www.shorehambysea.com/william-edward-winton/.
Carelessly cut as if in haste many photos are fast fading, some beyond redemption, whilst others have been crudely over-pasted causing the images to crinkle and grow mould with age. Many are photos from the original glass plates some of which were then coloured and converted into ‘dot’ print for the Winton postcards. Newspaper articles, postcards and old theatrical and carnival programmes have been glued in a vague chronological order, one on top of the other sometimes making it impossible to see every complete item.
Yet what remains is a remarkable record, not just of one family but of a 60-year chunk of Shoreham history from mid Victorian times to the 1940’s. Put together by a young Jessie Winton, another granddaughter of W.E.Winton, organiser of Shoreham’s celebrated carnivals and regattas with the resulting family photos, newspaper scraps and snippets reflecting her and her father’s (William Winton junior, photographer and printer) love of their family, amateur dramatics and the events surrounding their friends and neighbours.
(For the sake of continuity the family photos have been put into chronological order within each branch of the Winton offspring so that their progress over the years can be more easily be followed.)
The collection has been made available through the kindness and generosity of June Stirling, the granddaughter of W.E.Winton.
Roger Bateman
February 2010
Each image has a title and description. You can search for specific image content by using CTRL+F on your keyboard, (CMD+F on a Mac) and then mouse-over the resulting images to reveal the title. A text catalogue / index of descriptions is at the bottom of the page.
