On the fence - Sepia Saturday

A lad perched against a high fence is  this week's prompt image from Sepia Saturday Cue for me to hunt out photographs of fences.   

 

My paternal grandmother on the far right with her eldest son and his wife (my aunt and uncle)  and perched on the fence my mother.  My father was probably the photographer.  1938.

 

My mother again with her younger sister my Aunt Peggy - taken at South Shore Open Air Swimming Pool, Blackpool, Lancashire c.1930s.    It opened  to  visitors in 1923 and a the time was  the the largest in the world. and its statistics are staggering.  It cost £75,000 - equivalent to £2,248,000 in today's money.  Built in a classical style with pillars and colonnades, (you can just make these out in the photographs).    There were areas for little ones, fountains and slides,  bars and cafes - so  something for everyone.  By the end of the 1930s, visitors to South Shore Baths had totalled over nine million people.

 

In that 1950's and 60's, the Open Air Pool became  popular venue for international and national beauty contests and the location for celebrity photographs. 

But, you needed to be hardy in all but the best of weathers, as the water was notoriously cold.  From the 1950's   holidaymakers were heading abroad and becoming used to the waters of warmer climes.  Use dropped and the Baths  became a big white elephant  , demolished in 1983. 

On four decades  - my husband and I taking a  break on a country walk - against  a convenient gate.  

 

With daughter, 1985 in the  beautiful Wilton Lodge Park, near our home in Hawick, Scottish Borders. At 100 acres it offered riverside  and woodland walks, recreational activities,  and an awarded winning walled garden. 

 

    ************

Holiday Memories  

Wooden steps  and fence up to a covered bridge in Kaprun, Austria. 

 

A typical Cape Cod cottage, with a picket fence  
on the Island of Nantucket, in New England, USA.

 

A wooden jetty and boat house on the island of Martha's Vineyard, New England, USA

**************

Not my idea of fun - but here is our adventurous granddaughter on the high tree trek walk at Centre Parks in Whinfell Forest in the English Lake District.

 

 

**************

 

 

Sepia Saturday gives an opportunity for genealogy bloggers         to share their family history through photographs.

 

 

 

Click  HERE

             to read more from other Sepia Saturday bloggers

 

 *****************

Up and Down - Sepia Saturday

This week's Sepia Saturday prompt photograph shows a man upside down doing a handstand. 

 

Family talent in sport was minimal with  few vintage  images existing.   They improved  with my daughter joining her school gym club team and winning the regional cup.   

Grand-daughter followed in her footsteps, liking nothing better to run,  jump. climb  somersault, and vault  etc. from an early age, and later   sampled gymnastics, cross country, basketball and rugby, with her favourite horse riding.  She doesn't need to go to any exercise class to keep fit and proud parents and grandparents are pleased to  be the spectators.  

Upside Down

 Hiding Down

 

 A classic case where the Christmas box is more fun than the toy. 

Jumping Down 

 

 

 

More Jumping Down

Climbing Up & Down

  Vaulting Over & Down

 

*******************

 

Sepia Saturday gives an opportunity for genealogy bloggers         to share their family history through photograph

Click  HERE

             to read more from other Sepia Saturday bloggers

Women at the Wheel - Sepia Saturday

Sepia Saturday's prompt photograph for this week features a vintage cars, with a woman at the wheel.  Cars have been a popular topic on the site  and below are some mages  from past posts - and some new.

My cousin's first ever car - a 1932 Morris Minors and the only car he ever had where he made a profit when he sold it.  He bought it in 1958 for £20 and sold it a year later for £30! The photograph is taken near Inverary in the west of Scotland on the Rest and Be Thankful road, - notorious for landslips, snow and road closed warnings

 

The Baker's van in the village of Earlston in the Scottish Borders.  Date unknown.  Photograph  courtesy of Auld Earlston 

My  Father. John Weston (on the left) with his brother Charles. I was delighted to get this photograph from my cousin,  as it  is one of the few photographs I have of my father prior to his marriage in 1938  to my mother, and means a lot to me.   John and Charles were close as  brothers and often went on motoring trips together; here looking very suave in a smart casual style of the day.  c.1936.  My father was the first on either side of the family to drive a car.

***************

 As for women at the wheel:

 

 Yes,I know - I'm showing off my mini skirt in 1970!

    

1972  and we  graduated to a bronze Ford Cortina  in anticipation of the birth of our daughter, so a larger car was called for with room for the pram and all the baby paraphernalia etc.  as we did the rounds of visiting both sets of parents and relations.  

The car daughter and I hired on our trip to New England in 1996 - my first visit there since I had spent a year working in Cambridge, Mass. 1965-66.  This was in Falmouth, Cape Cod where we stayed in this cottage  and made a magical trip on a beautiful Autumn day sailing across to Martha's Vineyard.   Happy memories! 

Beginning young:

 Christmas Day - and Granddaughter at the wheel of her new toy tractor - we live in a rural area and she loved seeing all the different coloured tractors pass on the road.  

Granddaughter  at the wheel of the fire engine.  This was ;probably taken at Beamish Open Air Museum in north east  England - a wonderful place recreating life in past decades.  

 

 

************* 

 

Sepia Saturday gives an opportunity for genealogy bloggers         to share their family history through photograph

   

Click  HERE

             to read more from other Sepia Saturday bloggers

*************

Backdrops to Life - Sepia Saturday

A  man standing outside his house is  this week's the prompt photograph from Sepia Saturday.  Cue for me to look at the Backdrops of Life whether it be doors, windows, gardens - or shops.

 

Weatherly's post office and shop in Earlston in the Scottish Borders.    In the 1901 census, John P. Weatherly was described as a 40 years old Postmaster of 73 High Street, Earlston,  living with his wife, mother-in-law and children. Edward, Ellen and Margaret. The Trade Directory two years later adds to his role that of bookseller and printer.

But take a closer look at that newspaper placard outside the shop, which announces that "Crippin Removed to Hospital" - the big clue to dating this image. 

Dr. Hawley Harvey Crippen, was an American doctor  He was hanged  23rd November 1910 in Pentonville Prison, London  for the murder of his wife Cora Henrietta Crippen, and was the first criminal to be captured with the aid of wireless telegraphy.

 

 Lochhead's watchmaker & jeweller on Earlston High Street.  Look at the right hand window for that unusual term "cyclealities".

Three images courtesy of my local heritage group Auld Earlston

 

Onto the backdrop of Doorways and Windows - with images from my family collection  

My grandparents William Danson and Alice English, c,1916

A happy photograph but a sad tale.  Here is Dorothy Chisholm, on a ladder in a doorway pruning a plant. Dorothy was engaged to be married to my great uncle John Danson, a widower whose wife had died at the age of 21, and  whose daughter Annie lived with her grandmother.  John died in 1917 whilst in army camp, but the family always retained their link with Dorothy, one of the many women after the war  who never married.  I remember visiting her in bedsit with my mother and aunt when she must have been in her 80's.

 

My mother's cousin, Elsie Oldham, - standing outside her home which also  was where she ran her hairdressing  business  as Elise, c.1930s.

Another enterprising business woman from the 1930s - my mother  - Kathleen Danson.  She was apprenticed as a tailoress at the age of 14.   Here she is  modelling her dresses, outside the family home in Poulton-le-Fylde, Lancashire. 

                   

        

 

 

 My father, John Weston,  with my mother on the right and my aunt Edith on the left, c.1941.

In the doorway after their marriage in 1948  at St. Church, Poulton le Fylde, Lancashire, my aunt Peggy Danson and her husband Con. They met during the war and in 1949 emigrated to Australia. 

A wartime wedding of my Uncle Billy Danson and his wife Louie  

 Little me, at the back door of our home, near Blackpool,  Lancashire. 1944. 

 

A  bit older here with my father - at the same back door. 

 

 Here I am with my mother who I can only remember with grey hair. I can't remember having the kitten either!   Nowadays I think we would move that dustbin out of the way before taking a photograph!

 

It must  have been sunny!  

My mother and I again in unmistakably 1970s colourful fashion, outside the Edinburgh flat I shared with friends.

 

 

 Thirty years on and this is my little daughter playing hide and seek in a doorway at the ruined Heritage Castle near Hawick in the Scottish Borders. 

 

 

 

Hermitage Castle  was a favourite outing. Here on the right in the white coat is my aunt Peggy who emigrated to Australia in 1949 shortly after her marriage.  She returned for her only visit c.1980 and came up to Scotland. Here with my Aunt Edith (her sister), myself  and my young daughter.

 

 

 And I could not resist showing again this happy photograph of a  granddaughter at the window of her Wendy house.

 

 ***********************

Sepia Saturday gives an opportunity for genealogy bloggers         to share their family history through photograph

 

 

Click  HERE

             to read more from other Sepia Saturday bloggers

 

 

 *************************

 

 

Pals Together : Sepia Saturday

This week's Sepia Saturday prompt photograph fesatures four  happy lads  together,    Photographs below, largely from from my mother's Danson family,   fit the bill. 

 

My great uncle George Danson (1894-1916)  of Poulton le Fylde, Lancashire  is standing on the left with his  teacher and fellow pupils.  

The three photographs below were in my great aunt Jennie's collection.   Unfortunately only the first one  is identified - as "George's Friends in Manchester" where he worked on a W.H. Smith station bookstall.  George, is on the back row  on the right.   
It must be the hat, as here he looks older than his age.  He  could only be  20-21 years old, as in 1916 he joined the Royal Army Medical Corps and served as a stretcher bearer in the field in the /First World War. WAr    He was killed on the Somme, on the  16th September,  a week after his 22nd birthday.

 

The photographs below were also George's  friends.  The group on the left seems very formal and serious.  Is that the same threesome in the second photograph having a bit of fun?  Two are wearing pocket watches which are not visible in the first photograph and I was also  trying to match the partings in the haircuts. I am not convinced they are the same group - what do  other bloggers think?  

All three photographs were taken at Gale's Studios who had branches in both Blackpool and Manchester. 

The photograph below looks like it is an informal occasion (out for a drink, perhaps?), but it still is the time to wear a formal suit,waistcoat, collar & tie. 

 My grandfather William Danson is in the middle of the group,  with his brother Robert (and dog) on the left  plus an unknown friend.  Robert was the third son of the family, and William  the fifth  out of ten sons (eight surviving infancy),  followed by the only daughter Jennie, to whom I owe a great debt for being "the keeper of the family archives".  

 

Friendship Through Service 

 

This photograph  below of my great uncle Frank Danson  identified in Jennie's writing,   seems to be some kind of celebration.  Frank is front row left,  dressed formally in his uniform and cap, but what about those two fellows on the  back row in what appears to be their pajamas and beanie hats. 

 

 

                       

 

Jennie worked  in Poulton Post Office  and she recalled when a war telegram came through for her widowed mother. Maria Danson.   Fearing the worst, she was allowed to run home with it.  Fortunately it was good news - that Frank had been wounded but was recuperating hospital in Malta.  

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

This photograph   was unfortunately unidentified, but I think Frank could be on the right of the front row.  Wounded soldiers, fit enough to go out and about, wore a distinctive uniform of blue flannel suits with white revers and a red ties. 

 

Jack Riley is identified in the centre  of this group,  wearing sailor’s uniform  and a cap HMS Chester.  He was the grandson of my great grandmother Maria Danson, nee Rawcliffe's sister  - Jane.  On the left is Marcus Bailey, a neighbour of Jack in Fleetwood. 

I have  a postcard  (above) sent by Jack's  mother to my great grandmother Maria to say " Jack went out to sea today.  He went in good spirits".  The postmark is difficult to make out but could be 7.?? 16  or 18. 

I have tried to trace Jack  in service records without success.  HM Chester was a ship involved at the Battle of Jutland in the First World War, when young sailor John Travers Cornwell was awarded the prestigious Victoria Cross for "a conspicuous act of bravery".   Was Jack Riley another young sailor  on board HMS Chester at this time? Something else to add to my "Research To Do" list.

 

 A photograph from my husband's family collection with  this group of young sailors,  obviously relaxing!  The postcard franked 15th December 1909 from Beverley (Yorkshire?) was addressed to my husband's great grandmother, Mrs S. A. Hibbert, 169 Maxwell Street, South Shields, with the message:

Dear Mother, I write these lines hoping you are keeping well, and to ask if you can pick me out  in this group?  

 

 

 

 

 

My husband's uncle Matty (Matthew Iley White) of South Shields, County Durham is among this group of soldiers perched on a rock in India.  Matty (1914-1978)  served in the  Durham Light Infantry in India 1933-1937, as listed in his service book below.

 

 

 Matty, seated on the left) tucking into his food at army camp. 

Friendship Through Sport

 

My father  John Percy Weston (1912-2003) is on the second row right  as vice captain of his school team at Broseley, Shropshire.  This is the earliest photograph (1926) I have of my father and the local historical society was instrumental in me getting a copy. 

On a generation to a similar photograph of my brother  in the hockey team of Broughton School, Edinburgh, in the 1960s - (on the front row second from the left)

 

 ***********************

Sepia Saturday gives an opportunity for genealogy bloggers 

       to share their family history through photographs

*****************