Sometimes a group of pictures asks more questions than it answers.
I recently acquired five framed black-and-white views of Chester. At first glance I took them to be etchings: finely worked architectural scenes, full of the dense cross-hatching, deep shadows and precise lines we associate with the traditional printmaker’s art.
Look a little closer, however, and another possibility emerges.
Each image carries the name W. R. Boyd, together with a title and date. Under magnification the extraordinary detail begins to look less like the work of an etcher and more like the painstaking hand of a gifted pen-and-ink draughtsman, subsequently reproduced in print.
More intriguing still are the subjects Boyd chose.
Two of the earliest, dated 1934, take us into the medieval heart of Chester. A Corner of the Cloister, Chester Cathedral is an atmospheric study of light falling across ancient stone, the darkness of the columns created from hundreds of closely worked lines. Bonewaldesthorne’s Tower, Chester, also dated 1934, records part of the city’s medieval defences.
By 1935 Boyd was still walking and drawing.
In 11th Century Arch, Chester Cathedral, he doesn’t merely identify the Cathedral but specifically records the age of the architecture. Another drawing takes us to The Old Dee Bridge, Chester. Here the architecture shares the scene with two figures standing at the parapet, apparently looking down towards the river below.
Perhaps my favourite is An Old Curiosity Shop, Watergate Row, Chester. It is not a grand monument at all, but a glimpse of everyday commercial Chester: an old shop tucked amongst the historic Rows.
A Personal View
Taken together, the five pictures begin to feel less like conventional souvenir views and more like a personal visual record of a city.
Boyd appears interested in the places where history survives in ordinary life: an ancient arch still walked beneath; a medieval bridge still crossed; an old shop still trading; a cloister filled with changing light.
And then the trail becomes intriguing.
Evidence survives that at least one of W. R. Boyd’s Chester Cathedral images was reproduced as a postcard. His drawings were therefore known beyond the original works and appear to have circulated as images of the historic city.
But there may be another chapter to his story.
In 1950, the Chester Chronicle published an extensive historical series entitled The Siege of Chester 1643–6, written by a W. R. Boyd. By October that year the series had reached at least its eighteenth instalment, exploring in considerable detail the events of the English Civil War in Chester.
Was this the same man?
For the moment, I cannot prove it. But it is an enticing possibility.
The Boyd whose pictures survive here was clearly fascinated by Chester’s past. He didn’t simply draw a picturesque Cathedral; he identified an eleventh-century arch. He sought out Bonewaldesthorne’s Tower and the medieval city walls. He recorded the Old Dee Bridge and the Rows.
Fifteen years later, a man bearing exactly the same initials and surname was writing at length about the history of the same city.
Perhaps further research will eventually connect the two.
A Way of Looking
For now, these five modest pictures offer something rather special in their own right. Together they allow us to follow W. R. Boyd through Chester in 1934 and 1935, noticing what caught his eye and, through his extraordinary network of tiny inked lines, seeing the city as he saw it.
That is one of the pleasures of acquiring older works of art. Sometimes the discovery isn’t a famous signature or an unexpected monetary value.
Sometimes it is simply the recovery of someone’s way of looking.
And nearly a century later, W. R. Boyd has invited us to walk around Chester with him once again.
But who was W. R. Boyd?
Was the artist who so carefully recorded Chester’s Cathedral, Rows, bridge and medieval defences in the 1930s the same W. R. Boyd who, fifteen years later, wrote The Siege of Chester 1643–6 for the Chester Chronicle?
Perhaps somewhere in a Chester archive, an old exhibition catalogue, a family collection or even another picture hanging unnoticed on a wall lies the answer.
If you are a Chester historian, collector — or simply recognise the name W. R. Boyd — we would love to hear from you. Perhaps together we can put a name and a life back around these remarkable drawings.
Sara McKee FRSA
