‘The Carpenter and his Wife’, Alexander McCallum Webster, ca. 1867

This photograph of Mr and Mrs McInnes was taken by Alexander McCallum Webster at the Invercreran Estate in Argyll in the late 1860s. The photograph, which is captioned ‘The Carpenter and his Wife’ forms part of the ‘Our Glen’ photograph album held as part of the National Records Scotland.

Alexander McCallum Webster (1838-1879) was an enthusiastic amateur photographer who captured this portrait of Mr and Mrs McInnes as part of a series of photographs documenting those who lived and worked on the estate in the late 1860s. The series includes photographs of Webster’s family and other estate workers.  It shows a range of jobs and professions that say something of the labour involved in running an estate the size of Invercreran.  The album includes photographs of the road mender, a shepherd, a dairy maid and two women bracken cutters, also the ‘brochar’ - thought to be the estate foxhunter. Alexander’s grandmother, Mrs Margaret McCallum, lived at the estate and she also features in the album pictured with younger members of her family.

The ruler in Mr McInnes’s hand is indicative of his trade as the estate carpenter.  It was not unusual for family estates to employ resident carpenters to maintain and repair the numerous structures, fixtures and fittings that made up an estate’s domestic and working buildings.  Photographs of tradesmen and street-sellers were a common genre in Victorian photography, though notably, many of the ‘Our Glen’ estate workers appear elderly, even those employed to carry out manual jobs.  This could be indicative of their long service on the estate though the 1860s was also a time of great mobility for young Scottish men who had new opportunities to leave the country for work in Glasgow’s factories or in other towns and cities. Young Duncan Cameron, the Herd Boy in the ‘Our Glen’ series, is later recorded as working as a clerk in a mercantile house - a sign of changing times.