3-100-736 - "Royal Academy of Arts, London"/Heritage Images

No. 90., Old House, Great Winchester Street, c1884. 'We have here the residence of a great merchant of the beginning of the 18th century. Great Winchester Street was full of such houses, as we read in the Stow of 1720: "Here was a great Messuage called the Spanish Ambassador's House, of late inhabited by Sir James Houblon, Kt., and Alderman of London...".' Description by Alfred Marks. Sign reads: 'Valuable site will shortly by cleared for rebuilding'. The Society for Photographing Relics of Old London was founded in 1875 with the purpose of preserving an architectural record of buildings, some of which were built before the Great Fire of London in 1666, and which were scheduled for demolition as part of the city's urban redevelopment measures at the end of the 19th century. It was important to choose a photographic technique that would last for generations. In 1870, the pigment printing process was invented. Society member Henry Dixon mastered the process, and the photographic images are still of excellent technical quality today. The group continued to document the old buildings of London threatened with demolition until its dissolution in 1886.