Samuel Loxton

Samuel Joseph Loxton (6 January 1857 – 5 February 1922) was an English illustrator and artist who worked primarily in Bristol and the west of England for regional newspapers.

Life A 1919 Loxton illustration of Hotwells Halt railway station. Loxton began his career as a draughtsman for the Ordnance Survey Department but from c.1890 he contributed black and white drawings to the Bristol Observer, The Western Daily Press and the Bristol Evening News. He was best known for his architectural drawings. He worked closely with the Bristol journalist and editor of the Daily Press, George Frederick Stone, with whom he produced a popular series of historical articles for the Observer.

Loxton died on 5 February 1922 following a period of ill health and was buried in Canford Cemetery, Westbury-on-Trym, leaving a widow and two grown up daughters. Eighty of his illustrations of Edwardian Bristol were republished in print form in 1992.

About 2,000 of Loxton's original drawings were left to Bristol Central Library. The library have scanned these and made copies of them available on its Flickr site, at resolutions ranging up to c. 200 KB. The Bristol Record Society produced higher-resolution scans of some of the images (up to 6 MB), taken from Stone's volume. These have been uploaded to Wikimedia. Many of these images are included below in the gallery: 'Loxton's images of Bristol'.