YOU can get a feel of what it was like living in Taunton over 100 years ago from these painting.

Harry Frier captured the town and its people in more than 600 paintings during the late 1800s and early 1900s, when the pace of life was considerably slower than today.

His work is shown in a free-to-see exhibition of watercolours at the Museum of Somerset on Saturday (March 19) until October 22.

‘Captured in Time: The Art of Harry Frier’ has been curated from collections cared for by the South West Heritage Trust and features more than 30 of the artist’s works.

It includes scenes of Taunton, among them views of Tone Bridge, Fore Street, Church Square and Bath Place. Also included are The Assize Fair, a fire that destroyed Pollard’s timber yard in 1889 and scenes from Creech St Michael and Bishops Lydeard.

South West Heritage Trust curator Bethan Murray said: “Harry Frier was a prolific watercolour artist who worked in Somerset for more than 30 years.

"His watercolours of Taunton and the countryside around it have preserved for us a world that is lost.”

Frier (1849-1921) moved to Somerset in 1883 with his Somerset-born wife Kate Dyer.

He relied on commissions to earn a living but with the rise of popular photography in the early 1900s sales of his work began to decline.

After Kate died in 1913, his health deteriorated and in 1917 he entered Taunton Workhouse, where he died in 1921, aged 71, and he is buried in the churchyard at Creech St Michael.