Led Zep’s Victorian Thatcher Cover Pin-up is Star of His Own Show at Wiltshire Museum!

It’s just as unlikely Jimmy Page, who, it is said, designed the cover of Led Zeppelin 4, could’ve imagined Long Lot, the thatcher in a Victorian postcard discarded in an antique shop near his house in Pangbourne and used in the design, would be the central attraction in an exhibition some fifty-two years after the album was released, as the Thatcher himself would have imagined he would be the subject of a groundbreaking prog-rock album cover! I popped into the official opening of A Wiltshire Thatcher – a Photographic Journey through Victorian Wessex at Wiltshire Museum in Devizes, to sepia-tone my nose….

Researcher from the Regional History Centre at the University of the West of England, Brian Edwards discovered the photograph in November and became something of an overnight sensation with the national press, and a hero to prog-rock fanatics. Now news has moved on, the fable of the uncovering the image has come home to roost, accompanied once again by the collection of its photographer, Ernest Farmer intended it to.

The photograph came from an album titled ‘Reminiscences of a visit to Shaftesbury. Whitsuntide 1892,’ the remaining Victorian photographs from it are of Wiltshire, Dorset and Somerset scenes and some interesting portraits of farm workers, the customary Stonehenge images, and most poignant, the aftermath of a thatch fire in Sixpenny Handley.

They are displayed in the exhibit, alongside information boards about what little we know of Farmer, the rural life he depicted in his works, and information on thatching. The latter particulars might seem odd, being few images here depict thatchers, if it wasn’t for the selling point of the show, Long Lot, who is displayed throughout the exhibit, in interesting ways, such as a model of him, a selfie opportunity, and the merch of a rock legend in the museum shop!

Despite being a leading figure in the development of photography as an art form, which clearly shows through this celebration of his works, little is known about Ernest Farmer. 

Ergo, it’s a mixed bag, hinging on Long Lot but far outreaching a monoculture display. One supposes rather than modern day photographers aiming for a particular style, genre or theme, a Victorian photographer was a rarer thing therefore he captured whatever random subjects inspired him. To turn a negative into a positive, it certainly makes the exhibit diverse, and the photographs are fascinating, nonetheless.

It is, then, an exhibit of perchance, or luck, more than anything, and I guess that’s what makes it heterogeneous. Brian told me he’s working two projects down the line from this, in fact, it was never really a project at all, more chance discovery. The exhibition runs until the 1st September, at Wiltshire Museum in Devizes and would delight a number of groups, be they photographers, local historians, farmers or thatchers, anyone interested in West Country history or landscape, and of course, Led Zeppelin fans!

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