The UK’s oldest photo licensing company Francis Frith has landed a great licensing deal with Ancestry.co.uk ‘the world’s largest online family history resource.’ PAN reader John Buck, owner of the Francis Frith collection told PhotoArchiveNews.com this morning: “We have granted Ancestry an exclusive licence to use Frith photos in the genealogy market but their use is confined to their own genealogy web site and in family trees – they have no other commercial rights which we have retained.”
A scanning programme across 300,000 images started last year with 220,000 images being made available to Ancestry’s two million subscribers searchable by location, year and subject, the collection is a fantastic resource for anybody looking to discover how their local area has transformed over the past three centuries and see where their ancestors were born, married, lived and even buried.
• Collection dates from 1857-2005
• Digitised historic collection of photos features 7,000 villages, towns and cities from across the UK.
• Collection includes images of famous UK landmarks and offers a glimpse into everyday life over the past 150 years
Ancestry say:’The most comprehensive collection of historic photographs from across the past three centuries has been published online, with many images appearing for the very first time.
Published by Ancestry, the world’s largest online family history resource, from original photos held by The Francis Frith Collection, the UK, City, Town and Village Photos, 1857-2005 contains almost a quarter of a million photographs of villages, towns and cities from across the UK and provides fascinating insight into everyday life over the past 150 years.’
• Photographer and businessman Francis Frith was the originator of this collection. Born in Derbyshire in 1822, Frith made a fortune in two businesses before focusing his attention on photography. An early pioneer of the landscape aesthetic, in 1860 he founded the company that created this enormous archive and Frith and his team of photographers journeyed across the UK and abroad taking photos for sale. The archive his company created is now known as The Francis Frith Collection and is recognised as being the only nationally important archive of its kind in private hands.