New rare photo discovered of Lawrence of Arabia's Dorset home
The image from Clouds Hill in Bovington dates back to the 1890s
A newly discovered photo from Dorset's Clouds Hill cottage has been uncovered, showing visitors to Lawrence of Arabia's writing retreat.
The property's now owned by the National Trust, but was once the home of T. E. Lawrence, who spent years renovating and upgrading the house.
It's kept as it was back in 1938, when Clouds Hill was first opened to the public.
Few photographs were known to exist of the Bovington property from that time, with the previous oldest dating back to the 1930s, when major modifications were completed.
The new rare picture is thought to come from the 1890s, showing a family gathering at the house.
One of the National Trust volunteers at Clouds Hill, Martin Gething, has been researching the families who had previously lived in Clouds Hill in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries.
During his investigations Martin has made contact with a number of descendants of the families, and recently traced a great-granddaughter of a lady called Bessie Pride, who was born in the cottage in 1874.
Bessie’s great-granddaughter found they had a photograph of Bessie with other members of her family standing in front of Clouds Hill.
Martin explains: "The photograph dates from the mid- to late-1890s and is at least thirty years older than any other known photograph of the cottage. Previously, we were not aware of any photograph of the outside of the cottage dated earlier than the 1930s.
"The cottage looks surprisingly like now, including the roof which looks identical (apart from a skylight window that Lawrence added) and which therefore answers the perennial question of whether the roof was previously thatched. It wasn’t, at least by the 1890s."
Clouds Hill |newtab) is opening its doors to visitors for the 2014 from today (Wednesday 20th March).
It'll be open every Wednesday, Thursday, Saturday and Sunday, between 10.00am and 4.00pm, until the end of October.