TOWNSEND Clarence Albani(a)

Was an amateur photographer who built a stone darkroom (illustration bottom left) on his father’s farm at Coghill Creek, a few miles east of Saddleworth. Large stones taken from a quarry on the property were used in the twelve inch thick walls, and one stone high up on the outside was inscribed with the date, ‘1915’. The darkroom, which was plastered inside from floor to ceiling and covered with red wallpaper to absorb blue light, had a board floor, iron ceiling, and measured 5 ft 6 in by 7 ft. The one small window was fitted with a lightproof wooden cover. When the building was inspected in July 1965 one surviving box of half-plate glass negatives (NC) was retrieved, the rest having been consigned to a creekbed some years earlier. Clarence Townsend was born in 1894 and died on 15 September 1926, aged 32.

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