11/09/2026
Next time you are in the Dales, pop in and view some of their photography and books we have in the Guesthouse and Tearoom!
BEFORE DAVID ATTENBOROUGH… THERE WAS A LAD FROM SWALEDALE WITH A CAMERA. 📸🐒
The man in this photograph is Cherry Kearton.
He was born in 1871 in the tiny village of Thwaite, Swaledale, in the Yorkshire Dales.
And from those incredibly humble beginnings, he went on to help change the way the world looked at wildlife.
Long before television.
Long before Planet Earth.
Long before enormous telephoto lenses, drones and hidden wildlife cameras…
Cherry and his older brother Richard Kearton were trying to photograph wild animals using equipment so large and cumbersome that simply getting close enough to take a picture became an adventure in itself.
And their solutions were wonderfully bonkers.
They hid inside a life-sized imitation ox.
They built artificial tree trunks.
They disguised themselves as rocks.
They experimented with a stuffed sheep.
They climbed trees carrying heavy cameras and descended cliffs on ropes just to get close enough to nesting birds.
All because they believed wild animals were worth photographing alive in their natural surroundings.
And in 1892, Cherry Kearton took what the Science Museum describes as the first ever photograph of a bird’s nest containing eggs.
That may sound ordinary today.
At the time, it was revolutionary.
Then the lad from Thwaite went global.
Cherry travelled far beyond Swaledale and the Yorkshire Dales.
Africa.
India.
Borneo.
Australia.
New Zealand.
North America.
He became not simply an early wildlife photographer, but a pioneering wildlife filmmaker and natural-history documentarian.
He filmed animals at a time when much of the fashionable approach to wildlife involved hunting them.
In 1909 he even encountered former US President Theodore Roosevelt on safari in Africa. While Roosevelt’s huge expedition was killing animals for specimens and sport, Kearton increasingly argued for appreciating and recording wildlife rather than destroying it.
Cherry eventually directed more than 30 films, including Roosevelt in Africa, and his pioneering work helped lay foundations for the wildlife documentaries millions of us watch today.
And then there is perhaps the most remarkable connection of all.
David Attenborough.
When Attenborough was around eight years old, he was taken to see Cherry Kearton presenting one of his wildlife film lectures.
Years later, Attenborough recalled that the experience captured his childhood imagination and made him dream of travelling to distant places to film wild animals.
Just think about that for a moment.
A boy from Thwaite in Swaledale helped inspire the boy who would eventually become Sir David Attenborough.
And the chimpanzee looking back at Cherry in this photograph?
His name was Toto.
The image appeared in Cherry’s 1923 book Photographing Wild Life Across the World and captures something remarkably modern for its age.
Not hunter and trophy.
Not explorer and specimen.
Just two living creatures looking directly at one another. The surviving scan is now in the public domain.
Perhaps that’s why the photograph still feels so powerful more than a century later.
Because behind the moustache, cameras and extraordinary adventures was an idea that seems completely familiar today:
Wildlife was something to understand, photograph and protect.
And it started with two brothers growing up among the birds, hills and wildlife of Upper Swaledale.
The Kearton brothers came from modest circumstances in Thwaite at a time when the local lead-mining industry was declining. Their father taught them bird songs and where to find nests, while the surrounding Dales landscape became their first classroom.
From a little Yorkshire village…
to the beginnings of wildlife photography.
From Swaledale birds’ nests…
to Africa with a movie camera.
From hiding inside a fake ox…
to inspiring David Attenborough.
Not bad for a lad from the Dales.
Cherry Kearton — photographer, filmmaker, naturalist, adventurer and one of Yorkshire’s great forgotten pioneers.
📍 Born: Thwaite, Swaledale, Yorkshire Dales — 1871
And perhaps next time you’re walking through Thwaite, looking at the fells and listening to the birds…
remember that one young lad once looked at exactly that landscape and wondered:
“How can I show this to the rest of the world?”
He found a way.
Yorkshire Dales Uncovered
📷 Historic image: Cherry Kearton with the chimpanzee Toto, published in Photographing Wild Life Across the World (1923). Photographer probably Richard Kearton. Wikimedia Commons / Public Domain.
Historic photograph digitally restored and enhanced for presentation.
Yorkshire Dales Uncovered fans Yorkshire Dales National Park
