As Many Of Our Friends Know,

I have an interest in photography,

 and often look at the work of more gifted enthusiasts, and with that in mind I came across these pictures of amateur photographer Etheldreda Laing, 

 her family, along with Major Charles Laing, Etheldreda's husband, had moved to Bury Knowle House in Headington, Oxford in the last year of the 19th century, they lived with five indoor servants, a governess and a gardener, 

 what makes the pictures so unique is that they were taken way back in the early 1900s, when most photographers used black and white, Etheldreda used a process known as Autochrome, an early colour process, 

 She would later become known for her work with colour photography, and particularly for the series of pictures of her daughters, older daughter Janet was around 12 years old and Iris was roughly seven when Etheldreda first started photographing them, these photos were taken in the garden of their Oxford home, starting in 1908,  

after taking them, she processed the photos in a darkroom within the house and unlike black and white Autochrome required up to one minute for exposure, imagine trying to keep kids still for a whole minuet! the Laings left Bury Knowle House in 1923, and in 1936 moved to Richmond, London, where Charles died in a nursing home at the age of 76 on Sept. 7, 1939, Janet married Howard Montagu Bulmer de Sales La Terriere around 1930. She was his second wife. She died in Malvern, Worcestershire on Sept. 5, 1985 at the age of 87, Iris would marry Sir John Randolph Leslie, 3rd Baronet of Glaslough in 1958 — aged 55 — and become Lady Shane Leslie. Her mother Etheldreda died two years later, aged 88, in 1960, and Iris herself died, aged 92, in 1995, as for Bury Knowle House, it is now a public library, and its grounds are a public park, how wonderful that these pictures so full of innocence survived.