New Perspectives through Photographic Portraits: The Duparc Family Collection

The family home – The Bynn

Newlywed Ursula and Isaac Duparc moved into their new home, one of the first houses built on Village Way in 1924. This remained the family home until 2022 when their two sons, David and Anthony, who were born in the house, moved into a retirement community.

The couple named their new home ‘The Bynn’. The story is that when Ursula was small, she invented a language with her brother. Two of the words were ‘plinker’ and ‘bynn’, ‘plinker’ being a word for an object or thing, and ‘bynn’ being a receptacle of some sort. So, if you put something away, you put the plinker in the bynn. When she got married and they moved into the house, Ursula said she was a plinker being put in the bynn, and the name stuck!

In February 2022 the museum was informed that The Bynn was due to be redeveloped and that the contents might be of interest, considering that the same family had lived there for nearly 100 years. We could not believe our eyes when we walked through the front door. It was like we had gone back in time, the newest thing in the house was a microwave from the late 1970s! The house was almost perfectly preserved in its original state and was full up to the rafters with the family’s belongings. The Duparcs seemed to have never thrown anything away if they could help it, from paperwork from the 1910s, bottles of medicine and alcohol from the 1940s, to local magazines from the 1960s, it was all there. Clothes were hanging in wardrobes, ready to be worn. Glasses were carefully placed on kitchen shelves, ready to be filled. The beds were even neatly made.

Once we had recovered from our initial amazement at the house itself, we started going through boxes and drawers and found historic treasure. Through the hundreds of documents, photographs and objects that we looked through we started to piece together the family story and realised what an extremely rare opportunity this was for a social history museum. Resources and space would have to be found somewhere!

The photo collection

The photos range from the 1890s to the 1960s and encompass huge changes in technology and styles of photography. The earliest photos are of Ursula’s family, the Bambergers, a prosperous Jewish family from Hampstead, where Ursula was born in 1899. There are professional studio shots of her as a little girl as well as a photo of her in fancy dress as a jester from Lord Mayors Fancy Dress ball for Children, photographed in the Illustrated London News. This early exposure to photography, when it was still a relatively new medium, evidently had a big impact on Ursula. She became a keen photographer herself after acquiring a Kodak Box camera.

Apart from a school photo from 1890, the earliest photo of Isaac (who was 18 years older than Ursula) is from the early days of WWI, when he was in his early 30s. Isaac served as a Lieutenant in the 21st London Regiment of the British Army and was wounded, and convalesced in a military hospital in Marylebone, before returning to active service in Egypt and Palestine. We have quite a few documents from this period in his life relating to his military service, including the telegram sent to his family saying he was injured but okay, and the bag tag that went with his belongings when he was being shipped home to convalesce. A photo from WWII shows Isaac serving again – this time as an air raid warden. His ARP jacket is also in the collection. During WWI Isaac anglicized his name to Jack and was also known as Mich or Michael to family and friends which added another layer of complexity to the research as several names were used on different documents.  

There are also some photo booth shots of Ursula from the late 1920/early1930s when the booths were a recent invention. She obviously enjoyed trying out the new technology. Many photos reveal Ursula’s interest in fashion, as she varied her clothing, accessories, makeup and hair enormously over her lifetime to match current trends. There are very few notes on the back of the photos so this also helped when dating them. As we know from Anthony’s oral history interview, the photos were mostly taken by the same camera and printed in the same way (at Haddon’s Chemist Shop in High Street Amersham), so the clothing was one of the most accurate ways of dating the photography.

One of the last photos is a rare picture of all four family members from the early 1960s in the back garden. It was taken by a friend and colleague of Anthony’s who had come out to Amersham for the day.

Married Life

Ursula and Isaac met at the Liberal Jewish Synagogue in St Johns Wood. Both of their extended families were Orthodox Jews, but Ursula’s parents were founding members of the then new Liberal Jewish movement. Isaac, who was from Willesden Green, became the synagogue’s first secretary in 1919, a post he held for 48 years. Ursula, who had left school at 16 and worked for the Ministry of Pensions during the war, volunteered at the synagogue.

Although Ursula’s family were a lot wealthier than Isaac’s and he was 18 years older, their families did not oppose the match. The couple became engaged and were married at the synagogue in St Johns Wood on 9 October 1923. The museum collection now includes wedding announcement cards, an invitation and a rather sombre wedding photo. Ursula’s mother died just before the wedding so more muted celebrations were held in place of the lavish ceremony originally planned.

Ursula and Isaac started thinking about where they wanted to live from the start of their engagement. Both had grown up in North London in traditionally Jewish areas, and they decided they wanted to get away from the restrictions of their wider Orthodox Jewish family. Ursula had been on holiday around Pinner and Chenies and liked the area. As they needed to be close to a station so that Isaac could commute to London, they decided to follow the Metroland dream and build a house on the far end of the Metropolitan Line.

The Duparcs used the London-based architect John Farrer and the local firm of Morlands to build the house in the fashionable Arts and Crafts style. From the correspondence kept in the house we have learnt details of the costs, materials and the processes of building a house in the early 1920s.

Whilst the house was being built, the Duparcs lived in the Crown Hotel in Old Amersham. Friendships were soon made at the hotel’s communal dining table. Isaac walked up the hill to the station every morning and caught the train into London, and then did the journey in reverse in the evening. When they moved into The Bynn at last the Duparcs were able to furnish their new home with the generous gifts they had received as wedding presents.

Ursula and Isaac had two sons, David who was born in 1930, and Anthony, who was born in 1937. A nanny was employed to care for the boys until they went to school. Ursula clearly loved taking pictures of her children as the collection contains many photos of the young family. Both sons continued to live at home as adults, commuting into London like their father. Anthony was an accountant in the City and David, who had a Doctorate in Computer Science, worked at the University of London.

Isaac’s father Morris (originally Mozes), lived with the Duparcs after the death of his wife in 1934 and died in Amersham in 1942 when he was 87. He came to London as child from the Netherlands and had worked as a journalist and then editor of the Jewish Chronicle. Isaac also lived to an old age and died in 1980 at 99 years of age when “he was still sharp as a tack”. Ursula died six years later, at the age of 87. David and Anthony continued to live at their home until 2022, when their move to a retirement community brought nearly 100 years of their family story at The Bynn to an end.