Mystery 1920s photo album found in Edinburgh hotel

Archivists are seeking help to identify those captured in a mystery photo album discovered in an Edinburgh hotel room.

This fashionable 1920s wedding was among events captured in the photo album. PIC: National Records of Scotland.

The photographs were contained in a soft leather album found in a Travelodge in the capital.

It was handed into the National Records of Scotland with archivists now seeking more information on the apparently wealthy family captured on “high days and holidays”.

This image of a group of 1920s Girl Guides was found in the album. PIC: National Records of Scotland.

Registrar Alison Rosie, of the National Register of Archives for Scotland, said there was nothing with the album to identify the owner of the album or the subjects of those in the snapshots.

The pictures show smiling brides and grooms, a young girl posing with her friends on the lawn of their boarding school - which is possibly in Scotland - a nurse laughing in the snow, grandparents posing in front of a Model T Ford and a game of golf at Gullane.

Ms Rosie said: “Clearly the family was of some substance. The clothes are fashionable, if providing proof positive that the dropped waist dresses of the 1920s only flattered the tall and thin!

The family were clearly wealthy with this image depciting two older members infront of a Model T Ford. PIC: National Records of Scotland.

“Hair is bobbed, cloche hats abound, fox furs drape shoulders, hems rise for the younger generation while their older relatives hold on to a longer, more modest look, redolent of an earlier era. There are smart weddings, the bride and bridesmaids in flapper headbands and handkerchief hems.”

Family holidays to the fashionable Ullswater Hotel in the Lake District are also captured along with trips to York and Argyllshire, where the family stayed at the Loch Awe Hotel.

“There are even foreign holidays, to the Riviera and the Alps, which in the 1920s were limited to the well off,” Ms Rosie said,

The registrar added: “It has been possible to identify some of the places in the photographs but not where the family lived, which makes finding a suitable archive for the album tricky.

This image was possible taken outside a boarding school in Scotland. PIC: National Records of Scotland.

“All archives have their own collecting policies which set out what material they routinely acquire as well as areas of their collections they would like to build up.

“Without knowing the particular local connections of the family, and with nothing in the album which renders it of national importance, what should be its fate?”