Alfred Watkins

Alfred Watkins (27 January 1855 – 15 April 1935) was an English businessman and amateur archaeologist who developed the idea of ley lines.

Life

Watkins was born in Hereford to an affluent family which had moved to the town in 1820 to establish several businesses including a flour-mill, a hotel and brewery. Watkins travelled across Herefordshire as an 'out-rider' representing the family businesses and so got to know the area intimately.

Watkins was also a respected photographer. He made some cameras himself and manufactured an exposure meter called the Watkins Bee Meter due to its small size and efficiency. An example is in the Museum Resource & Learning Centre in Hereford. Frank Hurley used Bee Meters while he was expedition photographer on the Australian explorer Douglas Mawson's Australasian Antarctic Expedition, which departed in 1911 and returned in 1914. Hurley also used Bee Meters on Sir Ernest Shackleton's Imperial Trans-Antarctic Expedition which set out in 1914. The meters sank with the ship Endurance. Another accompanied Herbert Ponting and Robert Falcon Scott to the South Pole in 1910.

Watkins was active in the Photographic Convention of the United Kingdom and served as its president when it was held in Hereford in 1907. In 1910 he was awarded the Progress Medal of the Royal Photographic Society (RPS). Instituted in 1878, the medal honours any invention, research, publication or other contribution resulting in an important advance in the scientific or technological development of photography or imaging in the widest sense. It also carries with it Honorary Fellowship of the society. Over 3,000 photographs, taken from Alfred's original glass negative plates are held by Hereford Library.