Registrar of Marriages

* Information supplied by Stan Owen 1/5/23

W. P. Collier was Registrar of Marriages for the Bellingham area between 1920 and 1936 during which time he registered 224 weddings. His first was on 18th October 1920 and his last was on 5th December 1936. (Information supplied by Lynn McCauley of County Hall, Morpeth.)

One lesser known fact about W. P. Collier is that he was Registrar of Marriages for the Bellingham area from 1920 until 1936. He was a well-organised, meticulous individual, with an eye for detail and a mind for perfection. These qualities, combined with graceful handwriting, made him well-suited for the recording of marriages.

An additional advantage for the happy couple was that W. P. Collier would travel on his motorcycle to take pictures of the wedding, though group photography was not his main interest. He was more comfortable with landscape views of rural Northumberland for his postcard sales in Lock Up Lane, always known as Collier’s Corner.

Whereas cabinet and studio portraits of children and individuals are common, pictures of weddings are less common, simply because few could afford the cost of hiring a photographer to take pictures out of the studio, though studio portraits of the happy couple are found. Bellingham photographer and entrepreneur Roderick Thompson was more suited to portraits, inside and outside the studio, and experimented with flash from the 1910s.