After arriving from the Isle of Wight, Alfred Benjamin Butler established a photographic studio in Tenterfield in the 1880s and began amassing a collection of photographs documenting the area’s early years.

These hundreds of original photos are now in the possession of local photographer and collector Cleeve Butler who, although not a direct descendant of A.B. Butler, continued the trade in Tenterfield into second half of the 20th century.

Cleeve rather reluctantly acquired the collection from A.B. Butler’s son Bill in 1950 when he purchased equipment that could reproduce and enlarge negative plates. Cleeve was working in a Sydney studio at the time and wanted to purchase the enlarging equipment from Bill, who eventually agreed to sell him the 1928 machine, but only if Cleeve would buy all his equipment.

Cleeve agreed and a three-tonne truck turned up with the enlarger, masses of out-dated photographic equipment and boxes of old negatives.

But in the years since 1950, the photos that Cleeve never wanted and described as a nuisance have become a centrepiece of Cleeve’s private collection and provide an invaluable glimpse into Tenterfield’s pioneer years and the development of the district in the decades since.

Cleeve has developed just some of the thousands of unnamed portraits and hundreds of scenic shots he obtained from Bill Butler since he returned to Tenterfield in the 1950s. The shots include pictures of the 1880s bus-service that travelled from Tenterfield to Lismore, the 1886 opening of the railway station, the original Memorial Hall building, the Sandy Flat mills, the Tenterfield Station homestead, old photos of the Royal Hotel and the original Tenterfield Star building on High Street.

Some of Cleeve’s collection can be seen on display around town at places such as the Telegraph Hotel and the Tenterfield police station as well as various historical books.