Thomas Stearn (1825-1905), a Cambridge tailor, founded this firm of photographers around 1866. Later he ran the firm with his wife Eliza trading as 'Mr and Mrs Stearn'. Later still he took his sons Frank b:1856, Harry Cotterell b:1860, and Walter James b:1865 into the business, trading as Messrs Stearn and later as Stearn and Sons.
After Thomas died the business was run by his sons. Harry Cotterell Stearn died in 1906. Another son, Gilbert Stearn b:1866, was involved in the business at least until 1917. Walter James Stearn died in 1929. Thomas's niece, Edith was also involved with the firm.
Stearn’s operated throughout its history from 72 Bridge Street Cambridge, narrowly avoiding the loss of their premises in a fire in their darkroom in 1898. From 1908 to 1920 local directories also listed premises at Brunswick Terrace Cambridge. At some point between 1939 and 1943 the firm was taken over by A. H. Leach and Son, a well established and growing photo processing business based at Brighouse in Yorkshire.
A new limited company, Stearn and Sons (Cambridge) Ltd, was formed in April 1943, neither the shareholders not the Directors were from the Stearn family. During the period 1942 to 1950 the firm’s processing work was done by A. H. Leach in Brighouse. In 1966 A. H. Leach was taken over by an advertising company, Hunting Surveys, until the Leach family bought the business back from them in 1999. From 1968 the new company, Stearn and Sons (Cambridge) Ltd, did not trade on their own account but acted as agents of their holding companies. In 1970 the Cambridge firm joined Eaden Lilley Photographers.
Stearn and Son took most of the rowing photos until the late 1960's when they joined Eaden Lilley Photographers. Cambridge Central Library have a lot of the original negatives from 1942-1950. The copyright of the photos taken by Eaden Lilley has now passed to Lafayette Photography.
William Spicer, LL.D.
Vicar of Litlington, Cambridgeshire (Clare living), 1483
Vicar of Clopton, Northamptonshire
Will (P.C.C.) 1536
Large benefactor to Clare and to Trinity Hall.
Matriculated at Clare, 1879.
Born in November 1859 in Denmark Hill, South London, the son of James Sharp, a Slate Merchant who made money in the massive expansion of Victorian London and retired early rather than pass the business to his sons. Sharp went to Uppingham School (noted for its music) before starting a maths degree at Clare College, Cambridge in 1879. In Oct 1882 he left for Adelaide, Australia where he stayed for nearly ten years, working for five years as Associate to the Chief Justice of South Australia and then as a partner in a private venture, the Adelaide College of Music. There, despite his lack of formal musical training, he taught Singing and Music Theory, using spare time to write compositions of his own and to conduct the Adelaide Philharmonia Society (see Hugh Anderson 'Virtue in a Wilderness' Folk Music Journal 1994).
In 1893 Sharp took a part-time music post at Ludgrove School, a prep school in North London where he had freedom to create concert programmes with new material for choirs. He stayed there till 1910, combining it with several other jobs, notably as Principal of the (private) Hampstead Conservatoire of Music (1896-1905) and as Music Tutor to the Royal Household (1904-7). He had meanwhile married Constance Birch in 1893 and they had 4 children, settling in Hampstead. He joined the Folk Song Society in 1901 and began collecting Folk Songs in 1903. He proceeded to spend the rest of his life collecting with nearly 3,000 songs collected in England and over 1,500 on his four collecting trips to the Appalachian Mountains in USA (1915-18). He died in 1924 and most of his collection was housed and curated in the Cecil Sharp House in London by his daugher Joan. This later became the Vaughan William Memorial Library. See biography by A. H. Fox Strangways and M. Karpeles (rev. ed. 1967).
Master of Clare College, Cambridge, 1612-1620
Probably son of Christopher Scott of Bamston, Essex. Baptised there 4 February 1569.
Matriculated sizar from Pembroke, Michaelmas 1588.
B.A. 1591-2; M.A. from Clare, 1595; D.D. 1613.
Fellow of Clare.
1612-1620 Master of Clare.
1619-1620 Vice-Chancellor.
Subalmoner to the King.
1615-1620 Dean of Rochester.
21 December 1620 died in London and is buried at Bamston, Essex.