By Ellie Jones, Exeter Cathedral Archivist
We have recently completed a project to repackage the majority of our small photographs and postcards into special archival albums. During that process we had the opportunity to look through hundreds of images, mostly views taken in and around the Cathedral. Amongst them, however, is a lovely collection of research images of 45 Devon parish churches from Miss Ursula Radford. The photographs are all dated between 1942 and 1946, when she was involved in wartime and post-war church recording and research for the Devonshire Association, the Council for the Care of Churches, and the Diocesan Advisory Committee.
Miss Ursula Mary Radford was part of the notable scholarly Radford family, which included her sister Cicely, mother Emily Louise, grandfather Daniel, and cousin Courtenay Arthur Ralegh Radford. Each of them was engaged in archaeological, antiquarian, and Devon historical research, as well as public works. She was also a long-standing supporter of the Cathedral and was on the council of the Friends for many years. In 1949 The Society of Antiquaries published her account – the first to appear in print – of the medieval wax images found in the Cathedral during war damage repairs in 1943.
The Archives’ set of Miss Radford’s Devon church photographs are neatly labelled on the reverse in her unmistakable Art Nouveau-inspired handwriting (except a few which came from the architect Cecil Fryer Cornelius). A couple of letters and memos are also included. One of them sets the tone of Miss Radford’s work beautifully “19 XI 1942. 10.35 PM And time I was in bed”. She proceeds to discuss the work of some of the contributing photographers, but also to make a confession “I had the misfortune to drop Mr Muer’s plates and to break 5 out of the 15! If only he hadn’t sent them. I have apologised humbly and offered to have new ones made from the prints. I shall post back the remaining 10 to-morrow”.
These Devon church photographs are just part of the research papers of Miss Radford’s in the Cathedral Archives, and it is hard to disagree with the words written by Audrey Erskine (Cathedral Archivist 1954-1987) for the Devonshire Association following Miss Radford’s sudden death in 1976: “it is the charm, erudition and quiet wit of Ursula Radford herself which we shall chiefly remember, whose breadth of interests and depth of learning was always placed unstintingly at the service of others, either in conversation or in notes in her beautiful script”.