At 59 Rodney Street in Liverpool, The Hardmans’ House is a Georgian terraced property now owned by the National Trust. The house passed into National Trust hands in 2003, preserving an unusually complete record of mid-twentieth-century photographic life in the city. It operated for over four decades as both the working studio and private home of photographer E. Chambré Hardman and his wife Margaret Hardman, who was also his business partner and a photographer in her own right. The couple lived and worked here from 1947 until Margaret’s death in 1969, with E. Chambré Hardman remaining until 1988.
What Visitors Find Inside
The property preserves three distinct elements: an extensive photographic collection, the studio where the majority of the images were made and the darkroom where negatives were developed and prints produced. Together, these spaces give a clear picture of how a professional photographic practice operated in Liverpool through the postwar decades. The studio and darkroom remain largely as they were during the Hardmans’ working years, making the house an unusually intact example of its kind.
The Photographic Collection
The photographs on display range from formal portraits of Liverpool’s residents to wider views of the city itself and the countryside of the surrounding region. The collection covers both the human and geographic character of Merseyside, recording street life, landscapes and the faces of people who came through the studio on Rodney Street across several generations. For anyone interested in the social or visual history of Liverpool, the Hardmans’ archive remains one of the most detailed local photographic records from that period.