Alfred Vowles Exmoor

Alfred Vowles was born in the hamlet of Stone Allerton near Axbridge.

From 1910 he worked as a photographer in and around Exmoor. Riding a Bradbury motor cycle carrying his camera, tripod and a canvas bag of photographic plates he took photographs with a folding pocket camera.

He recorded people, buildings and working life.

Look back to 1945. It was a day of national rejoicing for the end of the war in Europe. Probably nowhere else in England was there a higher-flown flag than a Union Jack planted on Exmoor's Dunkery Beacon by a man with a flair for an occasion. Alfred Vowles picked his moment. It was exactly 3.0 p.m. 'This is your day,' Prime Minister Winston Churchill was telling the people over the radio. Vowles, a Minehead photographer, stuck his Union Jack on the highest point of the Exmoor to which he had always paid his devotions. The flag flapped to the whip of a stiff easterly breeze. Not far away a herd of deer stood motionless in watch.

Contributed by: Alan Smith