Mr and Mrs Reynolds Hole

The sitters were identified on the page of the album in which the portrait was found.

Probably Samuel Reynolds Hole (1819-1904), author of A Little Tour in Ireland (1859), and more famously, A Book about Roses. When the National Rose Society was founded in 1876, he became its president until his death in 1904. He was an inaugural recipient of the Royal Horticultural Society’s Victoria Medal of Honour.

Born at Newark in Nottinghamshire on 5 December 1819 and educated at Brasenose College, Oxford, he was ordained in 1844 and spent 43 years at St Andrew's Church, Caunton, firstly as curate and from 1850 as its vicar. He was appointed Dean of Rochester when he was 68. He died on 27 August 1904, aged 84.

On 23 May 1861 at Holy Trinity Church in Chelsea he married Caroline Francklin (1841-1916), daughter of John Francklin of Gonalston, Nottinghamshire. She died aged 75 on 13 February 1916 at Hawkhurst in Kent.

The couple appear on the 1881 census living at the Manor House in Caunton with their 18-year-old son Samuel Hugh Francklin Hole. Also present on the night of the census were a butler, a coachman, a lady's maid, a cook, a housemaid and a kitchen maid.

Photographed by Disdéri of Paris.