Elijah Yeoman (1849–1930) The Photographer Who Preserved Teesdale

A Childhood in Coverdale

Elijah was born in 1849 at Carlton Highdale in Coverdale, a quiet part of the Yorkshire Dales where his family made their living from farming. His father, John Yeoman, came from Horsehouse, further along the dale, while his mother Mary had been born in South Shields. By the time Elijah arrived, John and Mary already had four children, and their home was at a place recorded as Arkleside in Carlton Highdale.

The 1851 census gives us a lovely picture of the family before Elijah was old enough to remember much of it. John was farming 66 acres, Ann was thirteen, Wilson was twelve, Emma was seven and John junior was five. Elijah, the youngest, was just a year old. With five children of different ages and a working farm to look after, there would have been plenty going on in the Yeoman household.

Elijah was only ten when his father died in 1860. John Yeoman, aged 53, was buried at Coverham on 12 June, with Cotescue Park recorded as his home. The following spring, Mary was a widow, but she was still running the farm, now with 101 acres under her name. That was considerably more land than the 66 acres John had been farming at Arkleside in 1851. With four children still at home, Mary had kept the family's farming livelihood going after losing her husband.

By then Ann had left the family home, but Wilson, Isabella Emma, John and Elijah were still living with their mother. Wilson was 22, Emma was 17 and John was 15, while Elijah, aged 11, was attending school. They also had a 16 year old servant, Mary Ann Wensley, helping in the household.

The boys eventually went their separate ways. John became a photographer in Bedale, while Wilson and Elijah headed for Middlesbrough. As it turned out, Elijah would spend part of his working life in a trade very different from the one that later made his name familiar around Teesdale.

The Yeoman Brothers in Middlesbrough

In 1871, Elijah and Wilson were living together at 39 Fleetham Street, Middlesbrough. Wilson was 31 and Elijah was 21, and the census records them both as butchers. Neither was married, and both gave Carlton Highdale as their birthplace.

It's one of our favourite details about Elijah. We know him today for his photographs of Barnard Castle and Teesdale, but in his early twenties he was working in the meat trade with his older brother. The two men had left a farming community in Coverdale for a growing industrial town. 

Their work may have been rather different from farming, but livestock and meat would already have been familiar parts of rural life. Whether they had a butcher's shop of their own or were employed by someone else isn't recorded in the census. What we do have is their shared address and occupation, placing the two brothers together in Middlesbrough before Elijah's photographic career began.

From the Butcher's Shop to Photography

Somewhere between his days working as a butcher in Middlesbrough and his arrival in Barnard Castle, Elijah had made a complete change of career. His older brother John had also taken up photography, and the two were working together during the 1870s. John established himself in Bedale, a Yorkshire market town not too far from where the brothers had grown up in Coverdale.

A photograph carrying the name Yeoman Brothers, Bedale has even found its way into the Rijksmuseum collection in Amsterdam. It's rather nice to think that a portrait taken by a small Yorkshire photographic business has survived all these years and is now preserved in a museum in the Netherlands. John continued working in Bedale, and an 1890 trade directory lists his studio in Market Place, right in the centre of the town.

Elijah's own career took him further afield. He spent time working in photographic studios in London and other towns, learning the trade and gaining plenty of experience along the way. It was quite a change from the young man who had been earning his living as a butcher just a few years earlier. By the end of the 1870s, photography had become his profession, and he was ready to run a studio of his own.

A New Photographer on Galgate

On 24 December 1879, Elijah placed an advertisement in the Teesdale Mercury announcing that he had taken over the photographic business formerly run by J. T. Bainbridge. He was preparing to reopen in January 1880, bringing his experience from London and other studios to Barnard Castle.

The premises were at 13 Galgate, right in the commercial heart of the town. Galgate had been an important part of Barnard Castle's market life for centuries and was lined with shops and businesses serving local residents and people coming in from the surrounding villages. Elijah was joining an established street with plenty of people passing through it.

His business became known as the Teesdale Studio. The advertisements carried the words Established 1864, although that date belonged to the earlier photographic business rather than Elijah's own arrival. By taking over Bainbridge's premises, he had also taken over a business that people in Barnard Castle already knew.

There was a wedding to celebrate that spring too. In April 1880, Elijah married Honor Varder, who came from Harberton in Devon. It was the beginning of their married life together in Barnard Castle, where four children would follow over the next few years.

Elijah built up a busy studio, and he regularly looked for people to help with the work. Advertisements for assistants and apprentices appeared throughout the 1880s and 1890s, with further vacancies in 1905 and 1909. It was a working business with staff to train, customers to look after and photographs to prepare, finish and send out.

Family portraits were an important part of the trade. People could visit the studio to have their photograph taken, often receiving a mounted portrait with the photographer's name and address printed on the card. Some of those original portraits have survived for well over a century, even when the names of the people in them have been forgotten.

Elijah also photographed places around Barnard Castle and further up the dale. His views were sold and collected, often finding their way into albums alongside family photographs. Over time, the name Yeoman became familiar on pictures of Teesdale, with his work reaching far beyond the Galgate premises.

A Family Home at Number 13

By 1891, Elijah and Honor had four children, and the original census places the whole family at 13 Galgate. Elijah was 42, Honor was 44, and their eldest daughter Annie E. was 9. The younger children were Honor, aged 8, Frances A., aged 6, and John V., aged 3.

Two other people shared the address. Elizabeth I. Clarke, aged 28, was a photographer's assistant from Lincolnshire, and Hannah Robinson, aged 15, was employed as a general servant. That gives us eight people living at the same address, with four children still under ten.

One of the nicest things about finding their address is that it puts the Yeoman family somewhere we can recognise today. We already knew the Teesdale Studio operated from Galgate, but the census shows that Elijah and Honor were living there too. It wasn't just somewhere he went to work each morning.

The children would have known Galgate as home, with the shops and businesses of Barnard Castle on their doorstep. Annie, Honor, Frances and John were all born in County Durham, and the town would remain an important part of their family story even after some of them travelled much further afield.

Number 13 has seen plenty of changes since the Yeomans lived there. The building, together with 13A, is Grade II listed, and it later became connected with the Scala Cinema and Scala Café. The Scala opened in May 1924, long after Elijah's arrival in the town, giving the premises another place in Barnard Castle's history.

Today, Addisons occupies the building. On 3 July 2009, Barnard Castle Town Council unveiled a blue plaque commemorating Elijah's work. It's good to know that the man behind so many of Teesdale's old photographs is remembered on the very building where his family once lived.

The Places Elijah Photographed

We've come across Elijah's name on photographs and postcards of all sorts of places around Teesdale. Some are well-known views of Barnard Castle, while others show villages, country houses, rivers and old buildings that have changed or disappeared. His photographs are often among the first things worth looking for when trying to understand how somewhere appeared during the Victorian years.

Streatlam Castle is a particularly good example. The great house once stood near Barnard Castle but was demolished during the twentieth century. Elijah photographed it while it was still standing, leaving views of a building that can no longer be visited. For anyone exploring the history of Streatlam, those old images provide a much better idea of the house and its surroundings than a description alone could ever manage.

He also photographed The Bowes Museum and John Bowes himself. Durham Record Office holds three photographs of John Bowes dating from around December 1884, together with a copy of a photographic registration naming Elijah Yeoman of Galgate. It's a direct connection between the photographer and one of the best-known figures in Barnard Castle's history.

Among his other subjects were Egglestone Abbey, High Force, Raby Castle, Rokeby and many more places across Teesdale. Some photographs were taken to show a particular building or view, while others captured people going about their daily lives. A photograph might have been bought as a keepsake, sent to a relative or simply added to a family album.

One of the more unusual jobs came in 1905, when Elijah photographed the movement of an enormous sycamore trunk at Eggleston Hall. The timber weighed about six tons, and moving it was quite an undertaking. It was the sort of local event that might easily have been forgotten, but the photograph gives us a look at the work taking place on the estate.

There are also references in the Teesdale Mercury during the 1890s to an E. Yeoman providing pictures and framed photographs as prizes for Barnard Castle Volunteer shooting competitions. Elijah's studio was certainly well placed to supply photographs for local occasions, and the entries fit the kind of work being carried out in the town.

We particularly enjoy finding the smaller details in his pictures. An old shopfront, a cart standing in the street, buildings behind the main subject or a house that has since disappeared can tell us just as much as the view Elijah originally set out to photograph. There's often something new to spot when you return to the same image.

Another Studio in Kirkby Stephen

Elijah's business also reached into Westmorland. He had a studio on Station Road in Kirkby Stephen, another market town surrounded by farming communities and some wonderful countryside.

We found a surviving photographic envelope from the Teesdale Studio that gives the Kirkby Stephen address alongside the Barnard Castle business. The envelope, now in Durham Record Office, was addressed to N. F. Andrews of Cotherstone and carried the words Under Royal Patronage. It's a small piece of the everyday business, but a useful reminder that photographs were being ordered and sent out to customers across the area.

Kelly's Directory also lists Elijah as a photographer on Station Road in Kirkby Stephen. The business was operating there around the turn of the twentieth century, extending his work beyond the towns and villages of Teesdale.

Original photographs carrying Elijah's name still turn up in private collections and sales. In May 2022, Tennants Auctioneers at Leyburn sold a collection of approximately 240 photographs, almost all attributed to Elijah, along with 71 later negatives of his work. The collection had been assembled by Doreen and J. Kendall Thomas of Middlesbrough and included views of High Force, Baldersdale, Bowes, Middleton-in-Teesdale, Raby Castle, Rokeby, Cotherstone and Romaldkirk.

Some of the photographs still carried Elijah's stamp on the back. 

Honor, the Children and Life Beyond Barnard Castle

Elijah and Honor's four children grew up during the busy years of the Teesdale Studio. Annie Emma was the eldest, followed by Honor, Frances Alice and John Varder. By the turn of the century, the children were getting older and beginning to make their own lives, although Barnard Castle remained the place where they had grown up.

A family photograph survives from around this period, showing Elijah with members of his family. It was reproduced in the Teesdale Mercury in February 2003 and later appeared in material published by The Bowes Museum. Most of the photographs we find carrying Elijah's name show other people or places, so it is especially nice to have an image of the photographer himself.

His daughter Alice took part in a Barnard Castle performance of Gilbert and Sullivan's Trial by Jury in 1908. During the First World War, she was working in nursing, and in 1918 she was reported as having been mentioned in despatches for her services at Broadway Military Hospital in Sheerness. It's a considerable change from the family home on Galgate, and a proud moment in the life of someone who had grown up in the town.

John's life took him even further away. In October 1909, the Teesdale Mercury recorded his departure from Barnard Castle to take up farming in South America. He returned for a visit in July 1916, by which time the newspaper described him as having emigrated to Canada.

There was a wider family connection behind some of John's overseas travels. Honor's sister Mary Varder had married Thomas Bridges, whose family settled in Tierra del Fuego at the southern tip of South America. Their son Lucas Bridges was John's cousin, and in 1919 the two men became involved in establishing Devuli Ranch in Southern Rhodesia, now Zimbabwe.

Lucas arranged for land near the Devuli and Sabi rivers, and John travelled there with Ally Hamman to begin setting up the camp. It's a long way from the Teesdale Studio and the streets where he had grown up, but it adds another interesting chapter to the Yeoman family's history.

Leaving Galgate

Elijah continued working in photography into the early twentieth century. His name had been connected with the Teesdale Studio for more than thirty years, but by 1912 the name Sweeten was appearing in advertisements for the business.

The 1911 census already describes Elijah as a retired photographer, although his blue plaque gives 1914 as his retirement year. The 1914 edition of Kelly's Directory lists S. Arnold Sweeten as the photographer at 13 Galgate, where the business continued after Elijah's long spell there.

By 1921, Elijah and Honor were living at Yew Cottage in Sockbridge, near Penrith. His occupation on the census was given as retired photographer, and an accompanying address sheet names the cottage where they were living.

Sockbridge is a small village in the Eden Valley, quite different from the busy part of Barnard Castle where Elijah had spent so many working years. The name Yew Cottage still appears in property records, giving another place connected with his life that can be identified today.

Elijah died on 26 February 1930. The National Probate Calendar gives his address as Sockbridge, Penrith, Cumberland, and records that probate was granted in London on 1 April to Thomas King Bell, an estate agent with connections to Barnard Castle. His effects were valued at £989 12s 7d.

It was the end of a life that had taken him from a Yorkshire farm to Middlesbrough, into photography and then to Barnard Castle, where he spent the most familiar years of his career.

Making Elijah's Photographs Accessible to Everyone

The Bowes Museum holds thousands of photographs attributed to Elijah Yeoman, including views of Barnard Castle, Teesdale and the surrounding countryside. A large collection came to the museum through albums previously held by the University of York, with Reverend William Oliver playing a part in their earlier history.

Local historian Parkin Raine later spent a great deal of time identifying and cataloguing the photographs, helping to preserve the names of people and places that might otherwise have been forgotten. Other examples of Elijah's work survive in Durham Record Office, private collections, old albums and publications. Some still carry his name and studio address on the original mounts, while others have stamps or handwritten descriptions on the back.

We regularly come across Elijah's photographs when looking into the history of Barnard Castle and the surrounding villages. Sometimes it's a building that's still standing, and sometimes it's somewhere that has disappeared completely. Streatlam Castle is one example, but there are plenty of smaller places around Teesdale that we can still recognise in his pictures.

It's wonderful that so many of Elijah's photographs have survived, although it's a shame that much of this material isn't easily accessible for everyone to view and share. These are photographs of our local streets, villages, buildings and the people who once lived here, and we believe they should be available to as many people as possible.

That's why we're building our own collection of original Elijah Yeoman photographs. We're gradually collecting his work, looking after the originals and making digital copies freely available through Outdoor Exploring Family and Discover Teesdale. Where the rights allow, everyone will be welcome to download, use and share them without paywalls or unnecessary restrictions. We'd love these photographs to remain accessible long after we're gone, rather than disappearing into another private collection.

And it's nice to know a little more about the man behind them. Elijah wasn't simply a name printed on an old photograph. He was a boy from Coverdale who lost his father, worked as a butcher alongside his brother in Middlesbrough and eventually made his home in Barnard Castle with Honor and their four children.

Their old home is still there at number 13 Galgate, right in the middle of town.

More to Explore Around Barnard Castle

Elijah Yeoman photographed many of the people and places that appear throughout our Teesdale history pages. From John Bowes and his former home at Streatlam Castle to the streets of Victorian Barnard Castle, there's plenty more to explore.

John Bowes (1811–1885)

Founder of The Bowes Museum

Elijah photographed John Bowes in 1884, and several of those original portraits still survive. Discover the life of the man behind The Bowes Museum, his family home at Streatlam Castle and his remarkable connections with Barnard Castle.

Dr James Munro (1836–1905)

Victorian doctor and Barnard Castle magistrate

Another familiar name from Victorian Galgate. Dr James Munro lived at Brampton House and spent more than forty years caring for people around Teesdale. His former home later became Barnard Castle Post Office.

Streatlam Castle

The Lost Country House of Barnard Castle

Elijah photographed Streatlam Castle before it was demolished. Discover the history of the great house, its connections with the Bowes family and what became of one of Barnard Castle's most important country estates.

The Bowes Museum

Art, History and Elijah's Photographic Collection

The Bowes Museum holds thousands of photographs attributed to Elijah Yeoman. Explore the story of the museum itself, founded by John and Joséphine Bowes, and discover one of Barnard Castle's best-known landmarks.

Discover More of Teesdale

There's plenty more local history to enjoy. Meet other fascinating characters in our People of Teesdale collection, explore the buildings and stories of Barnard Castle, or head back to Discover Teesdale to find more places, walks and history across the dale.