Finding and Preserving Photos from Our 2020 Virtual Tour
If you are searching for fairy house virtual tour photos from Portsmouth’s 2020 event, start with the email account used for registration. For the October 3–4, 2020 virtual edition, we told registered guests that photo and video content would arrive in their inboxes. The virtual edition we shared in October 2020 was a specific past event, not a gallery that we can promise to open today. We have not verified a public archive containing the complete emailed collection. A careful search of your own messages and files is the most useful first step.
The tour took place online that year instead of following its usual South End format. Historic New England’s 2020 virtual-event listing confirms the October 3–4 dates and describes how families joined remotely. These dates help narrow a search even if the original registration receipt has disappeared.
Open the account that your household used for event registration. If more than one adult registered or shared a virtual ticket, ask which address received event messages. Search slowly rather than clicking unfamiliar links in a web result that promises access to the old photos.
Try this short sequence, changing the wording if your email system handles searches differently:
- Search October 2020 messages for “Fairy House Tour,” “Portsmouth,” “virtual” and “fairy house.”
- Check archive, trash and spam folders if they still hold messages from that year.
- Search for messages with attachments, then look separately for links to photo or video content.
- Review old family downloads and cloud folders using the same event words and the 2020 date.
An email may have been moved into a folder with a personal name rather than the event title. A saved download may also have a generic file name. If you find a promising message, verify its context before opening attachments, particularly if it now contains a shortened or unfamiliar address.
What to do when the message is there but the photos are not
An old message is useful evidence that you received information, but it cannot make a removed file or expired service active again. Work from the material you actually control. This recovery table separates problems that may be solvable on your own from access we cannot guarantee:
| What you still have | What to try | What we cannot promise |
|---|---|---|
| An attached image or video | Download a copy, then open it using a current trusted viewer. | That a damaged file can be restored. |
| A link in the original message | Check its destination carefully and whether it still opens. | That the original host still stores the collection. |
| A receipt without media | Search neighboring messages and other registered family inboxes. | That the receipt provides present-day viewing rights. |
| A file that will not play | Try a current app on a different trusted device; preserve the original. | That every old format will remain supported. |
Keep the original message while you test a copy of any attachment. Avoid websites that request an old email password or payment to unlock an unverified archive. We are not offering replacement downloads or confirming continued access to 2020 registration records.
You may still find public photographs documenting Portsmouth’s fairy houses from other years. Be precise about the date: community photos from the separate 2023 edition show a different event and should be captioned as 2023. A photograph of a later display is not evidence of what arrived in 2020 participants’ inboxes.
If a friend received the original 2020 material, ask whether they still have photographs they took or saved and whether they have permission to share them. Receiving an event email does not automatically provide unlimited rights to redistribute every image inside it. The person who made the artwork and the person who took a picture may be different people.
There is also a difference between recovering a personal memory and rebuilding an official archive. You can collect family photographs without presenting the result as a complete record of the event. We encourage clear dates, maker information when known and honest captions about what cannot be identified.
Once you find the material, a few minutes of organization can prevent another search in the future. Save an untouched original before editing brightness, cropping the frame or making a smaller sharing copy. Then add enough context that someone opening the file later knows which event it shows.
Use this three-part photo-credit check before posting or assembling a family collection:
- Date and place: identify the 2020 virtual edition only when the image genuinely belongs to it.
- Maker and photographer: name the people you can confirm, and mark unknown credits honestly.
- Permission: ask before publicly reposting another person's photograph or an identifiable child's image.
For digital accessibility, write a short description of the visible fairy house rather than calling it simply “photo.” A caption such as “tiny bark-roof house beside a stone path, saved from the 2020 virtual edition” helps a reader who did not see the original message. Only use that event date when you have verified it.
The 2020 online format let families experience the craft during a year when we could not gather for our usual outdoor tour. Its emails and photographs now belong to personal archives, where careful labeling can preserve the stories attached to them.
We value those memories, and we would rather be precise than promise an archive we cannot verify. If you find a picture, keep the original, note what you know, and share it with the care owed to its maker and the people it shows.