VICTORIAN Francis Frith may have come from the wrong side of the Pennines, but we in Yorkshire have a lot to thank him for. It was the Liverpool-based businessman's great enthusiasm for the new science of photography that allows us to enjoy these stunning scenes of Victorian and Edwardian Yorkshire.

Frith established a thriving grocery business which he sold in 1855 for £200,000 - the equivalent of £15 million in today's money. That wealth allowed him to indulge his twin passions of travel and photography.

He immediately set out on a series of pioneering journeys to the Nile regions that occupied him for four years. He took with him a wicker carriage that was cunningly designed to work as both darkroom and bedroom.

Frith later told in his life story of being captured by bandits and of fighting "an awful midnight battle to the very point of surrender with a deadly pack of hungry, wild dogs".

The conditions for taking pictures were also pretty hair-raising. For hours in the sweltering heat of the desert he laboured in his dark room, the fixing and developing chemicals fizzing in their trays. Sometimes he was forced to use tombs and caves as workshops. But the finished pictures drew rapturous applause from members of the Royal Society in London when he showed them there.

The entrepreneur in him could not be denied, however, and Frith soon realised that there was money to be made from photographs.

With the coming of the railways, the working man suddenly had the means to take his family on trips to the seaside. Frith realised that these new tourists would appreciate a cheap and lasting souvenir of their days away from the drudgery of school, factory or mill.

After marrying Mary Ann Rosling in 1860, he set out with the intention of photographing every town and village in Britain.

He traversed the country by train and pony and trap for the next 30 years, producing fine photographs of seaside resorts and beauty spots. These were bought in their millions by Victorians, and painstakingly pasted into family albums.

By 1890, his firm Frith & Co was the greatest specialist photographic company in the world, with more than 2,000 outlets.

Francis Frith died in 1898 at his home in Cannes. His project, however, continued to grow. It remained in business for more than 70 years, and by 1970 it contained over a third of a million pictures of 7,000 cities towns and villages. It is a remarkable monument to a remarkable man.

Today historians can access the Francis Frith archive at the click of a computer mouse, at its headquarters in Wiltshire. The photographs are an invaluable social record, showing as they do the minutiae of everyday life.

And the pictures are being made available to the general public through a series of books. The latest is of most interest to us: Francis Frith's Victorian & Edwardian Yorkshire.

This book begins with an evocative journey through the heartlands of the West Riding, as cities like Leeds, Sheffield and Bradford were changed beyond all recognition by the industrial revolution.

But Frith's photographs of the West Riding also record rural life. Boroughbridge High Street, pictured in 1895, is deserted save for a young girl pushing a cart and a shopkeeper, in white apron, studying the scene.

By contrast, Ripon market place in 1901 is a bustling scene. The Thursday market, arranged around the 90ft obelisk, attracted crowds of eager shoppers.

Pictures of Harrogate include one of the Royal Pump Room in 1902. The book's author, Clive Hardy, comments: "The Royal Pump Room opened at 7am dispensing sulphur and chalybeate water which, in 1902, cost 3d a glass.

"The roads leading to the Pump Room were often chained off to allow drinkers the opportunity of enjoying a leisurely constitutional to either the Crescent or Valley Gardens."

When he set his camera down in York, Frith was to capture both the majesty of buildings like St Mary's Abbey and the Minster and the colour of the city's street life.

His picture of Goodramgate in 1892 shows "Victorian street advertising at its best," Mr Hardy writes. "Websters are offering to sole and heel men's boots for 2s 6d a pair; women's boots are somewhat cheaper at 1s 6d a pair.

"John Wharton - we believe that is him standing in the doorway - owned The Cheap Shop, an early discount store offering china, glassware, lamps, brushes, wicks, lamp oil and so on at competitive prices."

Frith's picture of Low Petergate, taken on the same visit, shows more Victorian traders.

"On the right are the Lombard House premises of George Merriman, pawnbroker and jeweller, whose descendants were still trading over 70 years later."

Francis Frith's Victorian and Edwardian Yorkshire is published by the Frith Book Company, price £14.99

PICTURE - EYE FOR DETAIL: Francis Frith's camera captures Low Petergate in 1892, with the premises of George Merriman, pawnbroker, on the right