Two girls in a garden
The colors of Edwardian summers.
Chris Wild
c. 1910-1914
Etheldreda Laing was around 38 years old when she first took pictures of her daughters using Autochrome, an early colour process. She would later become known for her work with color 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, in 1908. After taking them, she processed the photos in a darkroom within the house. Some required up to one minute for exposure.
The marriage of Mr. C. M. Laing, of Oxford, with Miss Etheldreda Janet Winkfield, daughter of the Rev. R. Winkfield is fixed for July 23rd, at Little St Mary’s Church, Cambridge - Marriage announcement for Charles and Ethelreda Laing, July 20 1895:
The 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.Despite being 50 at the beginning of the World War I, in 1915 Charles Laing served in France in a Red Cross unit. In 1936, he listed his only recreation as "hunting" in the publication Who’s Who in Oxfordshire. 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.
