A few weeks ago the website was contacted to suggest some old photographs of Sunderland Point taken in the 1930s could be discovered in Lancashire archives. A search was started and they were found.

They are part of a larger group of images of the Morecambe and Heysham locality taken by James Frederick Levisohn ARPS (Associate of the Royal Photographic Society) which can be found in Lancashire County Council’s Red Rose collection.

A Google check on the photographer reveals very little. He was born in Leeds, Yorkshire in April 1901, to parents Frederick Adalberto and Hannah Mary Levisohn. The father was employed in the textiles industry.

In 1921, Levisohn was studying as a gas engineer and in 1928 married Ethel Cockshott. He died in Rutland in 1988.

There are 11 images in all. The first four show James William Gardner assembling (or perhaps repairing) new fishing nets for salmon and sea trout. James is well known and easily identifiable, there are several photographs of him taken by Sam Thompson of Lancaster around the same date.

James William Gardner, a Sam Thompson photo: Courtesy Lancashire Archives

James was born in 1880 in Morecambe and moved with his parents to Sunderland Point in 1887 into Upsteps Cottage. As the family grew, they transferred into 3A (known then as ‘the cottage in the field’) and later into (the big house) number 9. James died in 1960 in the Harbour House, Glasson Dock. He had been Harbour Master for a number of years.

These are fascinating images of historic interest showing the craft of net making. Salmon nets then as now, have top cords with floats and a bottom cord with weights. The net mesh is fixed to both ropes and thereby suspended in the tide as it drifts in the river.

Here, James is threading twine onto the special ‘needle’ used in the process of mending and making new nets. There are other needles on the grass by the homemade tiernal (basket) close to his right foot. He is sitting on the step of the fish house (located on Second Terrace, walking towards number 21). Inside the fish house are stored nets and net barrows.

By the net drying poles, James has his feet in the netting mesh to create tension.

Now standing, he is fixing lead weights to the lower cord.

In the last of the four photographs, here he is again (right) with an unknown fisherman in a Panama hat (anyone know who he is?). They are ‘stealing on’, using the prepared ‘needles’, stitching the net to the top and bottom cords. The netting will probably have been hand-made during the winter months.

The remaining photographs are of general SP interest.

The Yacht Sue seen between the net poles, it was owned by A.H. Mansergh and birthed at SP for many years. Built at the long-established Woodhouse yard in Overton in 1919 Sue was maintained and often captained by James’s brother Tom.

A commercial ship, perhaps owned by James’s brother Robert, leaving the estuary.

A fisherman with haaf net. He looks to have a salmon on the line which trails behind him.

Fishermen sailing up the river around high tide.

A view to Plover Scar Lighthouse on the west shore: Courtesy Lancashire County Council

The last two charming photographs are carefully posed images of a woman - perhaps it is Ethel his wife - in classic Sunderland Point views. This first one taken from the Lane looking towards the stone pillar and the river.

In the second, looking from the First Terrace towards Second Terrace at high tide. Apart from the now disappeared Cotton Tree, and the period dress, it is immediately recognisable. The woman stoops slightly as she looks over the water or is it to the sign not far from where she is standing on the ramp. It says, ‘Proceed at owners risk’ (remembered by Alan Smith)

Many thanks to Brian Lund who suggested these photographs existed.

James Frederick Levisohn

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James Frederick Levisohn

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