Fairford, Gloucestershire

A topographical cabinet card showing a view of the Market Place in Fairford, Gloucestershire.

The names above several of the shops can be easily read. According to the 1881 census, the shop premises on the far right belonged to William Cobbett Arkell, a forty-five-year-old grocer born at Stratton St Margaret near Swindon. By the time the 1891 census was taken, he had become a ‘Coal Merchant’.

The shop next to him has the name Boulton above the door but according to the 1881 census the occupants were Emma Giles, a sixty-year-old widow, and her son, James Skise Giles, aged 18. She gave ‘Boot, Shoe and Fancy shop’ as her profession and he described himself as a ‘Draper and Clothier’.

The next shop along belonged to Thomas Powell, aged 58, a ‘Chemist and Stationer’ from Hawkesbury Upton in Gloucestershire. He appears on the 1881 census living above the shop with his wife Sarah Martha Powell and their seven children.

Photographer unidentified. The reverse of the mount presents a wetstamp identifying ‘Thomas Powell, Chemist and Stationer’, whose shop appears in the photograph, as the stockist where the cabinet card was originally purchased.