Dr Tempest Anderson was a York opthalmologist with a yearning for adventure and a passionate interest in volcanoes.

The one-time president of the Yorkshire Philosophical Society is best known today for his series of trips from 1883 onwards observing volcanoes all over the world. Most famously, he was in the West Indies in the summer of 1902, where he witnessed a massive eruption on the island of Martinique from which he barely escaped with his life, and a second eruption on neighbouring St Vincent.

He took some remarkable photographs while on his travels. But he also put those same photographic skills to use in his native York.

A development such as Joseph Rowntree's innovative 'model village' in New Earswick was bound to capture his attention. Which is why the wonderful Imagine York archive at Explore York has a series of photographs taken by Tempest Anderson in the 1910s, just a decade or so after the first houses were built at New Earswick and while the model village was still being extended.

Joseph Rowntree was prompted to build New Earswick out of a conviction that working people deserved decent housing. His son Seebohm's groundbreaking study of poverty had been published in 1901, revealing appalling statistics about the dark, overcrowded and insanitary conditions in which many York working families were forced to live.

Rowntree's vision was for a village of decent mixed housing for workers and managers alike, in a green setting and with gardens for each home. He bought 150 acres of land near the village of Earswick north of York, and the first 28 houses were built between 1902 and 1904.

We include a couple of Tempest Anderson's early New Earswick photographs in Yesterday Once More this week, along with other early photographs of the model village, some taken by the Joseph Rowntree Village Trust.

The photographs range in date from the very early 1900s through to the 1930s. There is also an aerial photograph from the 1910s, showing the early stages of the village, with no houses yet to the left of the main road as you look down on it.

Between them, they provide a fascinating glimpse of the early stages of a unique housing experiment in York - one that was way ahead of its time in 1902 and, remarkably, would still be so today...

Stephen Lewis

All the photos on these pages, and thousands more, are held on Explore York’s wonderful Imagine York archive. You can browse it yourself for free just by visiting imagineyork.co.uk/