☀️ Eustace Collection: Looking through Olive's Eyes.

This article is a part of the Eustace collection - aimed at helping others create counter-narratives to threats to our historic environment.

Learn more about Eustace

Embark on a journey through Saffron Walden, sparked by a chance discovery in a book once owned by Gavin Stamp. Inspired by Edwin Smith’s photography and Olive Cook’s letters, uncover hidden narratives and historical layers that shape this town’s heritage, revealing new ways of seeing place, art, and memory.

Looking through Olive's Eyes.

Looking through Olive's Eyes.

I drive Woody up through the lanes towards Saffron Walden with great anticipation. I park in Swan Meadows Car Park - a vast black tarmac sprawl that jars my expectancy, holds nothing of the promise of the town beyond.

I came to Saffron Walden via a peculiar route.

Many years ago, I bought a book on photographer, Edwin Smith which led me to Gavin Stamp and Olive Cook, Edward Bawden and Eric Ravilious and finally to Saffron Walden.

I like to find places this way.

The book was simply entitled Edwin Smith: Photographs: 1935-1971. I bought it in a second hand bookshop in York. I rushed it home, sat down in front of the fire, put on my glasses and placed the book upon my lap.

The book on my lap had once belonged to the late Gavin Stamp.

The book fell open on a certain page; and on that page was a Christmas card to Gavin from Robert Elwall.

Curiously, my journey to Saffron Waldon was also inspired by a book by Robert Elwall on Edwin Smith called Evocations of Place. I knew Robert (kind of) - he had sent encouraging words about my photography via email back in the day.

Inside the Christmas card was a cut-out of a review of Evocations of Place.

These things come around in circles.

Gavin Stamp was a great lover of buildings with a conservatonists eye. He was a writer and TV presenter that spoke eloquently and passionately about our built heritage. It was Gavin who campaigned to save our traditional red telephone boxes and got many of them listed.

Behind Gavin's Christmas card was another folded document - a print out that was entitled: Swan Meadow Action Group. It was a leaflet that outlined an opposition to a proposed car park at Swan Meadow in Saffron Walden.

Attached to the leaflet with a rusty paper clip was a cut-out from the Independent entitled: Olive Cook, Writer, artist and wife of Edwin Smith.

After reading the review I noticed another large gap in the pages to the back of the book. I felt like a book detective, snooping between the leaf. When I opened the pages, several yellowed sheets of paper fell out. Through the back of the jaundiced paper I could see indentations of type and the bleed-through of ink from a pen. Indeed, the paper was so thin that I could see a signature at the bottom of the page.

I felt like a voyeur. Because it was in reverse, it took some time for me to parse through the letters of the name but, eventually, I repeated to myself the first name: 'Olive' and then the second: 'Smith' and then both: 'Olive Smith.'

"After reading the review I noticed another large gap in the pages to the back of the book. I felt like a book detective, snooping between the leaf."

I'd found a series of letters, addressed to Gavin Stamp, from Olive (who used her maiden name Cook in her professional career) about the plight of Swan Meadow. Her first letter (dated July 12th 1984) reads:

"As an admirer of your splendind stand in Private Eye against the destruction of our environment I write to ask if you might think of helping to defend an ireplaceable corner of Saffron Walden."

The three letters that are sent over a period of four months are as much an evocation of place as her husband, Edwin's photographs.

Whilst reading through them, I felt another layer of place emerging - that of a time where things weren't as precise as they are now - not as polarised. I felt it in the jocularity of the typed text, the smudged words, and the lively insertion of Olive's own handwriting.

Saffron Walden is just like that.

There's nothing quite like getting caught up in the ouvre of a place than by seeing it through the daub of a writer's words, the artist's brush or the photographer's lens. Even better is to come across a loose collective of people that inhabited that mid-century modern glow of post-war Britain: my fascination with Cook and Smith led me onto the other artists they were associated with.

What I had found in this book was a kind of archaeological strata, storied in every facet of its nature - from the intent of its original words, to Gavin Stamp's livre-led way of filing, through to the brief glimpse of a period in the life of Olive Cook and Saffron and, finally, of the analog type-set world of the 1980's.

In finding that this book held other narratives - I realised that this could be applied to other things: to photographs and paintings and to buildings and places. Thus, my view of Saffron Walden was multi-faceted, prismatic.

"In finding that this book held other narratives - I realised that this could be applied to other things: to photographs and paintings and to buildings and places. Thus, my view of Saffron Walden was multi-faceted, prismatic."

Not only did I see Saffron through my eyes but also, whilst walking through the litter strewn desert that is Swan Meadow car park, for a brief moment, I saw it through Olives.

For me, this book and this place has proffered up new ways of seeing.

On that note, I'd like to leave you with some final words about Edwin Smith, from Olive's pen, that touches on new ways of seeing. It's from the introduction to Edwin Smith's Photographs book.

"Despite his reluctance ever to intrude upon the scene, we are conscious of Edwin's presence in every photograph, conscious that we are looking through his bespectacled eyes, enriched through them with new and unimagined ways of seeing."

Olive Smith, Edwin Smith, Photographs 1935-1971, Thames and Hudson.