Historic postcards offering fascinating glimpse into Edwardian life in Yorkshire Dales

In fact his images of Yorkshire in the late 1800s and early 1900s are as fascinating now as they must have been to his subjects then.

John Brown Smithson – or JB, as he was usually known – was born in 1948 and his father worked in the mines of Durham.

He later trained as a gamekeeper and around 1870 he first became interested in photography.

A few years later he moved to Leyburn where he set up the Wensleydale Studio.

As a good Methodist, he took over the Railway Hotel and turned it into the Wensleydale Temperance Hotel adding a studio and a darkroom.

He worked there until 1926 when he retired, at the age of 78, to Craven House, West Burton, and died there in March 1938 aged 90.

His primary interest seems to have been postcards, which were a fashionable craze of the day.

Picture postcards were popular from the 1890s and JB Smithson produced thousands of cards working from studios and caravans in Hawes, Scotton, Catterick, Pateley Bridge and Aysgarth. He is credited with taking over 50,000 photographs.

Now a small sample of them are on show, thanks to collector Clive Torrens.

The postcards illustrate mainly rural scenes. They include a haytime scene at Low Row in August 1908; a woman who was a correspondent for the Darlington & Stockton Times; a scene at Muker Agricultural Show; a waterfall at East Ghyll Foss at Keld; and a scene in Reeth.

They are on display at The Garden Room at Tennants auctioneers in Leyburn, North Yorkshire, until February 18.

A spokesman for Tennants said: “Predominantly Edwardian, the majority of the postcards were produced by Leyburn photographer J B Smithson and offer a fascinating insight into life in the Dale a century ago.

“John Brown Smithson (1848-1938), born at Smarber near Low Row, operated his business from Leyburn from the 1870s until his death, but also ran a studio at the army camp at Scotton during the First World War.”

Collecting postcards is a long-standing pastime, and good private collections frequently come up for sale in Tennants’ Stamps, Postcards and Postal History Sales.

The next sale is on May 1.