109 Church Street, and the house that stood there before it

The dating is ours, not the photograph’s. Nothing on the print gives a year. The estimate — probably between the late 1850s and the early 1870s — comes from the photographic process, the clothing of the two figures, and the appearance of the roadside stonework.

The present 109 Church Street stands on or very near the same footprint, and post-dates the demolition: its ashlar, segmental-arched openings, string course and quoins read as later nineteenth century. It is therefore not a witness to the earlier building, and nothing in its fabric can be used as evidence for it.

The gate pier

One thing does span both. A stone pier survives at the roadside, terminating the boundary wall, and the same pier appears at the extreme left of the photograph, standing proud of a rubble wall in exactly the relationship it holds today. It is the only object we have identified in both the historic image and the standing site.

That is what makes it a control point rather than merely an old stone. A photograph can be registered to the ground when at least one object of known real-world dimension appears in it; the coping of the rubble wall, running as a near-horizontal datum across the whole frame, gives a second constraint.

It was measured on 27 July 2026 at approximately 1.43 m exposed height and 0.35 m across the face. Both figures are working values: the tape hook is not visible in the width photograph, and — more importantly — the exposed height is not the original height. Street levels in villages of this kind have typically risen between 150 and 400 mm since the 1830s through successive resurfacing, so an unknown further depth of pier stands below the present pavement.

A first comparison of proportions between the photograph and the standing stone was inconclusive, and deliberately so: it was made on a web-resolution derivative, at the extreme edge of the frame where lens distortion is worst, with the base of the pier in deep shadow. It is now a question that can be answered rather than a guess, which is progress of a sort.

The two figures

One man stands in shirtsleeves near the door; the other leans on the boundary wall with his forearms, in a long coat and hat. A note in the family research provisionally identifies them as Samuel Walters and a companion. We have not been able to test that against any independent source, and we are publishing it as a working position rather than a finding.

If you recognise either man, or have another print of this photograph — particularly one with writing on the back — we would very much like to hear from you.

Why this building is first in the queue for reconstruction

Three reasons, none of them sentimental. It is the earliest thing we can see. It is demolished, so a reconstruction shows something nobody can otherwise visit — and shows no one’s present-day home. And it has a surviving physical control point at the roadside, which is the difference between a model that is evidenced and a model that is merely plausible.