This is an albumen print of a photograph of the Brunels’ house at 26 Cow Court, immediately south of the Thames Tunnel works. The photograph has been mounted on card, with a printed portrait of Marc Isambard Brunel below. The photograph is commemorative, certainly datable to after the death of Marc Isambard Brunel in 1849, and likely to around 1854-55.
The Brunels moved to Rotherhithe in early 1835, when work on the Thames Tunnel had recommenced following a government loan being secured to continue the project after a period of suspension following flooding. In October 1835, M.I. Brunel reported that ‘We live in Rotherhithe, just a few steps from the entrance to our Chasm.’[1] Having earlier lived at Cheyne Walk, Chelsea and at Bridge Street, Blackfriars, Rotherhithe would have presented a quite different side to London. Their proximity to the busy Tunnel works freed them from repeated carriage journeys across London, often documented in Brunel’s diaries, and allowed the family to be constantly present with oversight of work.
This oversight included Sophia Kingdom’s invention of a system of baskets winched up to the couple’s bedroom – perhaps that window visible here, with a small balcony – to deliver reports during the night. Intriguingly, an unidentified female figure appears in this photograph, sat in the balcony of that window. If the photograph were taken before 1855, it is possible this is the only known photograph of Sophia Kingdom.
The photograph shows that the Brunels tended to a garden, in which they grew food as well as other plants; this is referred to in Marc Brunel’s correspondence, which appears to suggest they sollicited donations of seeds from others for the garden.[2]
On the back of the cardboard mount is a signature: ‘W. Gastineau’ and an address, ‘4 Br[eck]nock Terrace. Camden Town’. This man is probably the photographer William Gastineau (1821-72). The son of a successful watercolour artist, Gastineau appears to have become an engineer.[3] He joined the Royal Photographic Society in February 1854, his membership having been proposed by the artists Charles Eastlake and William Newton.[4] He exhibited six photographs, mostly calotypes, with the Society in 1857.[5] From 1854, Gastineau’s address was at Coldharbour Lane, Camberwell; further work is required to determine why an address in Camden appears on this print. It may indicate a date earlier than 1854. Little else is known about Gastineau’s life or work; no other photographs attributable to him appear to have survived.
References
[1] Marc Isambard Brunel to Jacques-Charles Allard, 13 October 1835, Archives Nationales, Paris, AB/XIX/3858, Dossier 3 (‘Nous résidons a [sic] Rotherhithe même à quelques pas de l’entrée de notre Gouffre.’)
[2] Marc Isambard Brunel to Jacques-Charles Allard, undated, early May 1835, Archives Nationales, Paris, AB/XIX/3858, Dossier 3: ‘We have planted the broad beans in our small garden’ (Nous avons planté les fèves […] dans notre petit jardin’).
[3] On his father, see Greg Smith, ‘Gastineau, Henry (1790/1-1876)’, Oxford Dictionary of National Biography (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2004), https://doi.org/10.1093/ref:odnb/10441. Evidence for William Gastineau’s career is provided by a letter from Gastineau ‘on behalf of B. Burleigh, resident engineer of the Great Northern Railway Company’ applying for permission to divert sewers which was read to the Metropolitan Commission of Sewers in August 1852: see Minutes of the Proceedings of the Metropolitan Commission of Sewers, 10 Jan. 1849-21 Nov. 1854 (London: Metropolitan Commission of Sewers, [1855]), p. 25. Gastineau also witnessed an patent for ‘improvements in economising fuel’ filed by his brother-in-law, cf. Frank Clarke Hills, Improvements in Economising Fuel, Patent No. 2921 (1856) (London: George Edward Eyre and William Spottiswoode, 1856), p. 5.
[4] See Members of the Royal Photographic Society 1853-1901, available online at: https://rpsmembers.dmu.ac.uk/rps_results.php?mid=434
[5] Roger Taylor and Larry John Schaaf, Impressed by Light: British Photographs from Paper Negatives, 1840-1860 (New Haven, CT/New York, NY: Yale University Press/Metropolitan Museum of Art, 2007), p. 318; Photographic Exhibitions in Britain 1839-65, online at: https://peib.dmu.ac.uk/itemphotographer.php?photogNo=683&orderby=coverage&photogName=Gastineau%2C+William