I have sent it to a friend at the Museum of English Rural Life in Reading and I am hoping that between us we can discover where it was.

The photograph was taken by ‘S. O. North, Southampton Street, Reading’ according to what is embossed on the lower right-hand corner. I failed to find him in the old directories, in Southampton Street, but I did find a Stanley O. North, photographer, at 37 Northumberland Avenue, Reading, between 1909 and 1916.

This makes me wonder if he served in the First World War and didn’t come back.

The line of chimneys in the distance suggests there was a terrace of small houses by the farm, much like the ones built in the 1880s and 1890s in urban Reading. The farm may have been on the edge of town and could have been swallowed up by housing not long after the

picture was taken.

The farmhouse appears to be of brick with a roof of flat tiles and there is a brick barn to the left of it, with a pantiled roof.

It is hard to make out whether the building to the left of that is boarded, or clad in corrugated iron.

The farm yard is typically untidy, with a hay or corn stack, and various implements, including a very large roller with its shafts up in the air. I don’t know the implement the horse is pulling, and what might be in the handcart near the two boys.

The two ladders, one against a shed and one against the hay or corn stack, are the sort that are wider at the bottom than the top, which you still occasionally see in farmyards.

The farmer looks at the camera with a proprietorial air, with one hand on his lapel.

The girl in the long white apron is probably his daughter, and the two boys, probably his sons, are wearing Eton collars.

It is hard to tell whether or not there is a figure sitting by the back door of the farm house – if so, it is probably the farmer’s wife.

It looks as though the whole family has dressed up for the occasion.

Please get in touch if you recognise the farm, or know anything about Mr North, the photographer.

David Cliffe