The Early Photographic Print Collection (EPPC) comprises archive removed from Historic England’s Architectural 'Red Box' Collection during the mid-1990s for security or fragility reasons. Further material was added to EPPC as part of the Red Box Project (2011-2012), a project to digitally photograph the contents of the Architectural Red Boxes and make them available online. In May 2017 a further 17 items removed from BBF01 (Barbara Fuller Collection) were incorporated into RBO01/EPPC.
EPPC contains over 22,000 items, predominantly photographic prints but also postcards, correspondence, extracts, measured drawings, pieces of original artwork and printed illustrations & engravings. In addition to this figure, over 4400 negatives (including over 1500 copy negatives) have been catalogued and cross referenced during the course of the project.
The vast majority of material dates from the late 19th century to the early 20th century but the collection also includes some early 18th century engravings and colour photography from the late 20th century. The archive was originally compiled from a number of sources including photographs from the Courtauld Institute of Art, National Buildings Record, Victoria County History and numerous commercial and amateur photographers.
Subjects include churches and country houses, historic buildings and social history. There are street scenes and village-scapes which bring to life Victorian and Edwardian England, alongside photographic records of buildings threatened with destruction during the mid to late 20th century.
The collection is organised by post 1974 English county and London Borough. Items relating to unitary authorities (established under powers conferred by the Local Government Act 1992) remain physically housed with and hierarchically attached to their former metropolitan / ceremonial county, but carry the address of their current unitary authority. For example, Pleasington Old Hall (OP21963) is catalogued under the parish of Pleasington in the unitary authority of Blackburn with Darwen, but is housed with material relating to Lancashire (RBO01/24).
Aside from the series of English counties and London Boroughs the following additional groupings exist: unidentified material (RBO01/49), foreign material (RBO01/50), Channel Islands (RBO01/07), and Isle of Man (RBO01/22).
Cataloguing began in 2009 and was completed in April 2016.
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