About the Bentley Beetham Collection
Bentley Beetham, a schoolmaster at Barnard Castle School, highly-regarded natural history photographer and avid rock climber was selected, along with a handful of others that included George Mallory and Andrew Irvine, to join the ill fated British expedition in 1924 to scale Mount Everest. Mallory and Irvine lost their lives on Everest that year and to this day it is unsure as to whether they made the summit or not. The question of 'did they, or did they not?' is the biggest mystery yet to be solved in mountaineering history!
The Bentley Beetham Collection website (http://www.bentleybeetham.org) gives access to a large collection of images, maps, strategy papers and newspaper clippings from and about the 1924 expedition. The collection paints a portrait of Tibet shortly after the turn of the century, a fateful moment in history, as well as life in Barnard Castle, the surrounding area of Teesdale and Bentley Beetham's mountaineering exploits in the Alps, Tatra and Atlas mountains.
