Yesteryear: Rare photograph of a Dunstable procession celebrating Queen Victoria's birthday

It was taken from the second-floor window of the reporter’s office of the Dunstable Borough Gazette when it was based on the corner of Albion Street.

Ashwell Morgan had a photo studio next door to the Gazette, in what later became the town’s Liberal Club and, until recently, a branch of Corals, the bookmakers.

Mr Morgan had decided that he did not want to work in his wealthy father’s mining company in Wales and instead came to Dunstable in around 1906 to run his own business.

Over the years, there were at least four photographers based in the shop next to the Gazette, including Percy Turner, Herbert Strange and Albert Cooper. Their careers have been researched by postcard collector Trevor Hunt, who has written a series of articles about pioneering local photographers for the Dunstable Local History Society’s newsletters. The latest of these was distributed to members at the society’s February meeting. Digital versions of the newsletters can be read online on www.dunstablehistory.co.uk.

Mr Hunt has assembled a large and valuable collection of local postcards. The photo here, embossed on the front with Ashwell Morgan’s name, is very rare. It shows what is probably part of an Empire Day event in the times when schoolchildren were given a holiday each year on May 24 (Queen Victoria’s birthday) to celebrate Great Britain’s achievements.

The Gazette prior to 1932 did not have the technology to process pictures, so this is probably the first time Ashwell Morgan’s photo has been published. The paper had moved into what was then a new building on the corner of Albion Street in 1879. Today it is the office of Urban and Rural estate agents.