This post was first published on my previous blog on 31/12/2018

I had a sneaking suspicion that this would be a photo of somewhere in Hereford – there was a limited number of people with the surname Hubbard accompanied by three initials.  Using the 1939 Register, I found an Arthur H. F. Hubbard and his wife Constance E J Hubbard living at ‘Levanne’, Bodenham Road, Hereford.  Thinking that I had “cracked the case” on my first shot, I used google maps to trawl up and down Bodenham Road to see if I could get a match on the architecture.  

No luck.

No matter how hard I tried, I couldn’t find any way that this house could fit onto the roadscape of Bodenham Road, so it was back to the drawing board (AKA The Scanner).  Taking a high resolution scan of the right hand portion of the photo, I was able to read the two signs:

With a bit of squinting, I made out the sign to read “The Residence Private Hotel”.  A modicum of googling helped me out here with a reference to The Residence Private Hotel on Broad Street, Hereford (see here ​http://www.herefordshirelore.org.uk/wp-content/uploads/2018/02/A2A-6.3.pdf ).  Going back to the old faithful of Google streetview, it became apparent that the building to the far right of the picture is Hereford Museum, Art Gallery and Library (Photo © Jaggery (cc-by-sa/2.0)).

Because I know Hereford pretty well, this also meant that I knew that Victorican gothic splendour of The Residence was no more, and in fact had been replaced by this architectural ‘gem’: 

Comparing the two photos:

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it confirmed that we had the correct location.  Aylmer and Tiller’s book “Hereford Cathedral: A History” (pub A & C Black, 2000) confirms that The Residence was in existence up to the 1950s and prior to  being a private hotel had been the residence of the canon residentiary of Hereford Cathedral.