A scene depicting life on the Dolforgan estate

The photos, dating from the early twentieth century and on glass plate negatives, were found in a storeroom clear-out at Newtown High School.

The photographer, John Bancroft Willans, was a well-travelled land owner in Montgomeryshire.

There are plans to donate the pictures to the National Library of Wales in Aberystwyth.

These photographs have been a great find Historian David Pugh

The negatives were given to Newtown High School's predecessor, Newtown County Intermediate School, more than 60 years ago.

Local historian David Pugh is attempting to identify the 800 negatives.

He said: "The geography teacher was clearing out the storeroom and he came across boxes of negatives - around 800 pictures.

"The first thing I did was scan them in and try to identify them, although there's still a lot of work to do and I'm about half way through at the moment."

John Bancroft Willans was the owner of the Dolforgan estate in Kerry and many of the photographs depict his life as an Edwardian gentleman.

Willans pictured working life in mid Wales

In the pictures, he recorded family tea parties in the garden at the estate and took pictures of farms and buildings on his land.

Mr Willans was commissioned by the Powys Land Club to photograph churches and other buildings in mid Wales.

He used around 80 of these to illustrate a book, The Byways of Montgomeryshire, which was published in 1905, but the rest of the 800 pictures discovered in Newtown High School have had to be identified individually.

Mr Pugh said: "Willans was a typical Edwardian gentleman and he took many pictures of his estate and of local workers.

"The third element is pictures he took of local buildings - many of which have now gone.

Willans' travels in Europe make up many of the photographs

"He also took many pictures of his travels to virtually every country in Europe and these pictures are proving the most difficult to identify.

"He visited three or four European countries every year from 1904.

"When he died in 1957, his diaries were left to the National Library.

"They are very detailed, so I am able to use those to match up where he was with the pictures themselves."

Mr Pugh said most of the 800 photographs dated from the first decade of the twentieth century and were important in documenting the history of mid Wales.

He added: "I've seen nothing like this recorded from that era.

Lymore Hall, near Montgomery, was demolished in the 1930s

"There was a professional photographer in the area at that time called John Owen, but most of his negatives have been lost.

"These photographs have been a great find."

Bob Davey, a governor at Newtown High School, said: "Even though they are viewed from a historical sense now, they (the photographs) were originally used during geography lessons.

"John Bancroft Willans was very friendly with EG Lewis, a former geography teacher and head teacher at the school.

"He also donated his library collection to the school."