A VICTORIAN mobile photographer’s studio, which has spent most of its life on the Dorset coast at Swanage, is looking for a new home when it goes under the Charterhouse Auction gavel on Friday, August 5.

“This is a fantastic opportunity for someone to acquire what we understand to be a unique piece of Victorian photography history which would make a stunning studio or office,” said Richard Bromell, of Charterhouse.

The travelling photographer’s studio was commissioned by the Pouncy family of Dorchester.

Father and son snappers John and Walter Pouncy along with subsequent professional photographers, took a vast number of photos of seaside visitors to Swanage over the years in the studio.

The horse drawn studio has an interior with fittings for retaining the backdrops, a small darkroom for changing and processing plates, a glazed roof section, a glazed side, an entrance, an exit and has sprung wheels.

Over the years it received various changes and has previously been restored.

In the current ownership for several decades, it continued to be used as a photographer’s studio but is now needing some restoration and conservation having lived in a field near Wareham for a period.

The Royal Photographic Society director Michael Pritchard, who visited the studio, confirmed its uniqueness, saying that it was the only such studio that he has ever seen.

This unique photographer’s studio, estimated to be valued at between £8,000 and £12,000 in the Charterhouse two day August 4 and 5 auction, would make a wonderful artist or photographer’s studio due to the light which floods in.

In addition, it comes with history, photographs and provenance dating it back to the end of the late 19th century.

The auction is being held at Charterhouse, The Long Street Salerooms, Sherborne, in Dorset, although the studio remains on site at Wareham, from where it will need to be collected.

Richard Bromell and the team at Charterhouse can be contacted for valuations at The Long Street Salerooms, Sherborne 01935 812277 info@charterhouse-auction.com where they are taking further entries for their August specialist auctions of silver, jewellery, watches along with antiques, wine, port and whisky.