The pictures displayed on this site are from the collection of Robert Edmund Kemp. Many were taken by his father, John Edmund (Ted) Kemp, in the 1950s and 1960s in and around Maldon on the river Blackwater in Essex.

Ted grew up in Maldon, but he lived in London at the time these pictures were taken. However, Ted, his wife Pat, and Robert frequently returned to Maldon where Ted’s mother, Lucy, and his brother, John Arthur (John!) Kemp, lived. John scraped a precarious living as owner and operator of a number of sailing vessels during these years and many of the pictures are of his fishing smack, Polly, and his sailing barge, Memory.