Angela Bromley-Martin - Biography

Angela Bromley-Martin (1926-2013)

Angela Felicity Bromley-Martin (nee Hampden-Ross) was born in Hong Kong in 1926 (daughter of Sydney Hampden-Ross, FCA, FSAA, of Shek-O, Hong Kong) and first came to Bosham in 1937 when she stayed in Forge Cottage for the summer holidays from boarding school.

After the war, which she spent in Canada, she married naval officer Captain David Elliot Bromley-Martin (1914-2002) in Hong Kong in 1949. David was scion of the landed family of Bromley-Martin, of Ham Court, Worcestershire. Thereafter, they went to live on Bosham Hoe in 1950, having two sons, Robin and Michae, the second of whom was born on Bosham Hoe in 1955.

Angela was given her first camera, a Kodak Box Brownie, when she was nine years old in Hong Kong. Photography and collecting historic prints were to remain her abiding passion for the next eighty years. She was a very long-standing member of the Chichester Camera Club and exhibited her photographs through the 60s and 70s.

In the mid-1970s, Angela began her interest in old photographs of Bosham, having been asked to look after and preserve a collection of old prints and negatives that had been found following the death of Mrs Merritt. Over the following 25 years, she was to amass a collection which now stands at over 2,500 images of Bosham from the dawn of photography in the 1880s, through the 20th century and into the 21st.

She published several books that made use of the collection, as well as her ever-increasing knowledge.

Angela died on 12 February 2013 at St Wilfrid’s Hospice, Chichester.

« Back to Biography

Edit This Biography : Biography Credits