'By the yew hedge'

An inscription on the album page reads: 'In the top walk by the yew hedge, my mother with Sambo, Margaret and Nellie Bawtree.'

The inscription was written by Thomas Inglis Luard, so the woman seen here is Jane Anne Luard (née Inglis).

Helen and Margaret Bawtree appear on the 1861 census, living on the High Street in Colchester [Essex] with their parents. Their father, John Bawtree, was a banker. According to the census, in 1861 Helen was 15 and Margaret was 8. If this photograph was taken in the mid-1860s, Helen would have been about 20 years old and Margaret would have been about 13.

Photographer unidentified.

From an album compiled during the 1850s and 1860s by Mrs Jane Anne Luard (née Inglis), the wife of Rev. Thomas Garnham Luard (1821-1886), Vicar of Stansted in Essex.