For Led Zeppelin fans it is an instantly recognisable image: that of a grey-bearded figure stooping, his leathery hands grasping the pole supporting a bundle of hazel on his back.
But the origin of the image, which forms the centrepiece of the eye-catching front cover of Led Zeppelin IV, has remained a mystery for more than half a century.
Now it has been revealed that it is a late-Victorian black and white photograph of a Wiltshire thatcher.
Brian Edwards, a visiting research fellow with the regional history centre at the University of the West of England, said he came across the image in a photograph album during continuing research extending from an exhibition he curated with Wiltshire Museum in 2021.
Edwards’s research involved monitoring everyday sources that stimulate public engagement with Wiltshire’s past, from paintings and photographs to artefacts and memories. It was while following up on some early photographs of Stonehenge that he came across the one made famous by the English rock band.
“Led Zeppelin created the soundtrack that has accompanied me since my teenage years, so I really hope the discovery of this Victorian photograph pleases and entertains Robert, Jimmy and John Paul,” Edwards said.
Released 52 years ago, on 8 November 1971, Led Zeppelin IV has sold more than 37m copies worldwide, and includes one of the group’s most popular songs, Stairway to Heaven.
The album’s cover artwork was radically absent of any indication of the band name or a title. The framed, coloured image of the stooped man, which has often been referred to as a painting, was juxtaposed and affixed to the internal, papered wall of a partly demolished suburban house. The back cover of the album was a block of flats, thought to be Salisbury Tower in Ladywood, Birmingham.
It is understood that the Led Zeppelin lead singer, Robert Plant, discovered a framed, coloured photograph of the original image of the Wiltshire thatcher in an antique shop near guitarist Jimmy Page’s house in Pangbourne, Berkshire.
The original image was discovered in a Victorian photograph album titled: “Reminiscences of a visit to Shaftesbury. Whitsuntide 1892. A present to Auntie from Ernest.” It contained more than 100 architectural views and street scenes together with a few portraits of rural workers from Wiltshire, Dorset and Somerset.
Beneath the stooped man’s image, the photographer wrote: “A Wiltshire thatcher.” Further research suggests the thatcher is Lot Long (sometimes Longyear), who was born in Mere in 1823 and died in 1893. At the time the photograph was taken, Long was a widower living in a small cottage in Shaftesbury Road, Mere.
Meanwhile, a part-signature matching the writing in the album suggests the photographer is Ernest Howard Farmer (1856-1944), the first head of the school of photography at the then newly renamed Regent Street Polytechnic, now part of the University of Westminster.
Farmer’s photograph is now in Wiltshire Museum in Devizes, and an exhibition featuring the image, along with others taken in the west of England during the Victorian era, is scheduled to be held at the museum in spring 2024.
David Dawson, the director of Wiltshire Museum, said: “The ‘Wiltshire Thatcher: a photographic journey through Victorian Wessex’ exhibition will celebrate the work of Ernest Farmer, who today is little known but was a leading figure in the development of photography as an art form.
“Through the exhibition, we will show how Farmer captured the spirit of people, villages and landscapes of Wiltshire and Dorset that were so much of a contrast to his life in London. It is fascinating to see how this theme of rural and urban contrasts was developed by Led Zeppelin and became the focus for this iconic album cover 70 years later.”
