During the 1870s Gibraltar's Colonial Engineer - Captain Samuel Buckle - was involved in various building developments on the Rock - one of which was the construction of a new public market place near Waterport Wharf.
When the new market was opened to the public in 1877 an official photographer was sent to take a series of snapshots of the place shortly after. The result was then carefully collected in an album and filed away in the Colonial Office library in Gibraltar. It remained there, probably only seen by a select few who were allowed to do so - but definitely not by the general public - until graciously released by the British Government's National Archive more than a hundred and thirty years later.
Frontispiece of Captain Buckle's Album dated 1879 (Acknowledgements to Richard J. M. Garcia)
What makes the album rather more interesting than might appear at first sight is that Captain Buckle decided to include in it a large number of other photographs of different views of Gibraltar. Some of these seem to have been copies of studies taken by well known photographers of the era - others are less easy to place and may have been ordered specifically by Buckle.
Also included in the National Archives release were a series of seventeen unusual sepia photographs. They are all more or less similarly framed portraits of well known - and not so well known - people connected with the British administration of the colony. I am not sure whether the originals form part of a collection of paintings in the Convent nor whether the photos were part of Buckle's album. I have nevertheless included them here as I have several watercolours and paintings of the Rock which he must have done while stationed in Gibraltar.
Copies of all of these are included on the sites identified below:1879 - Captain Buckle - Photograph Collector
1879 - Captain Buckle - Gibraltar's New Market
1879 - Captain Buckle - Photographs of Gibraltar
1879 - Captain Buckle - Gibraltar's Portrait Gallery
1879 - Captain Buckle - Paintings