Flat Caps for Work & Play - Sepia Saturday

Two men in flat caps enjoying a game of darts feature on this week's Sepia Saturday prompt photograph.  I have never thrown a dart in my life, but have thrown many a dice as a child, as parent and grandparent, playing such games as Snakes & Ladders, Ludo , Beetle and Monopoly and hoping to win so me points by throwiNg the elusive Six.  

                        

                    

     

       Photographs courtesy of pixabay.com 

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Likewise I have never worn a flat cap  but,  for many  men,  a flat cap was the popular style - as below.  *

 In Britain flat caps were generally associated with workers in the north of England.   Think of old photographs and newsreels  of men streaming from the mills, or cheering from the football terraces or enlisting for the First World War. 

I think of them too as worn by coster-mongers in London - think of Eliza Doolittle's father in the film of "My Fair Lady";  or Del Boy in the TV comedy  "Only Fools  and Horses". 

     

Photographs courtesy of pixabay.com 

My first family photograph on the theme has a poignancy about it.  For here  c.1903 in the group of schoolboys is my great uncle George Danson  - on the left sporting a flat cap.   George was killed in the  First World War at the Battle of the Somme in 1916,  a week after his 22nd birthday.  I wonder how many of the other  boys and their master survived that carnage.

 

 A photograph of my grandfather William Danson, a labourer,  seated with a group of workers at the ICI factory at Thornton, near Fleetwood, Lancashire.  Was this some special occasion with Grandad given the pride of place, seated  at the front?  It is difficult to assess the date - 1930's?   

 

My husband is aged about one, here with his  maternal grandparents Matthew Iley White (a boilermaker)  and Alice Armitage of South Shields, County Durham.  c. 1938.

 

 

Stepping out oblivious of the camera is Grandfather Donaldson, a signwriter and painter, again in South Shields, County Durham.  His  son and one of his grandsons followed him in his trade

 From my cousin's collection are photographs of the Oldham family business of carters and coalmen in Blackpool. Lancashire, overseen by three generations - Joseph Prince Oldham (1855-1921), his son John William Oldham (1880-1939) and his daughter Elsie Smith, nee Oldham (1906-1989)

  

The business was founded around 1890, steadily became prosperous and in 1905 moved to near North Station, Blackpool in a house with a large yard, hay loft, tack room. and stabling for seven horses.  

 

Below young Gloria (Elsie's daughter) atop one of the carthorses, under the careful eye of a worker - in a flat cap.

 

 

Time moved on and the first Oldham road vehicle was bought in 1921 to replace the horses  - but the flat caps remained the fashion. 

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At the other end of the social scale,  the Duke of Windsor as Edward Prince of Wales, in the 1920s and 30s  was photographed wearing a flat cap as part of a golfing outfit.  Nowadays finer versions are still popular rural wear at farming events, countryside fairs, horse race meetings etc. 

And if you have the youth  and looks to get away with it, flat caps are  being worn  as fashion statements by "celebrities" - men and women. 

 

My own father would not be seen dead in a flat cap - 

He much preferred a trilby as headgear.

Now the baseball cap has become the headgear for all ages.  

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

 

 

  

Click HERE To find out how other bloggers have viewed this week's prompt image. 

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Cows Across Europe - Sepia Saturday

A replica of Noah's Ark with its animals  features in this week's Sepia Saturday  prompt post.  

 An old memory quickly came to my mind - of us out walking with our young daughter and,  to encourage her uphill, we would sing: 

                                       Who built the ark?

                                        Noah, Noah 

                                        Who built the ark?

                                        Brother Noah built the ark!  

 

Another ditty was          The animals went in two by two,                                          The elephant and the kangaroo;  

 No elephant or kangaroo here, but I spotted a cow in the prompt photograph  - and that is my theme for today with memories from visits to the Austrian Tyrol, Warsaw and the West Highlands of Scotland. 

  ave fond memories of holidays in the west of Scotland and seeing that icon of Scottish tourism  (along with tartan,  heather, bagpipes. and whisky)  -  "The "Hielan' Coo"   -  aka the Highland Cow.  So take a look at these photogenic friendly natives, with their long horns and flowing coats, designed to withstand the worst of the Scottish weather.

"I'm Trying to be Friendly"

My husband meets Hamish and Dougal  - 

the "pets" at the hotel where we were staying near Oban.

"I'm Showing off my  Horns!"

 

"I'm Hungry" 

We were staying in a cottage at Fionnphort on the far west  of the Isle of Mull, just across from  the island Iona, and the highland cattle roamed freely  around the small village - one shop, one pub, one seafood cabin and the ferry office.  Here one hungry  cow decided to take a nibble from the garden of our self catering cottage.

"I've walked far enough, I'm taking a rest"

"I'm little and lonely"

This young cow  stood motionless at the side of the road, very happy to pose for the visitors walking down to the ferry across to Iona.  

If you don't come across the  real thing, look out for a shop sign. 

 

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Austrian Cows are a very different breed - sleek   and photographed here on a mountain meadow.  Bringing the cows down from the mountains in September ahead of winter is a popular local festival with the cows wearing garlanded head dresses and of course their cowbell.

 

 

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Artistic Cows in Warsaw,

 

 

 

 

 

Cow Parades are the world's biggest public art event with cities  hosting the fibre glass sculptures,decorated by local artists and often displayed designs reflecting local culture and history.  After their season on display, the cows are auctioned with the proceeds going to charity.  

 

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Sepia Saturday gives bloggers an opportunity to share 
their family history and memories through photographs.

 

 Click HERE to see more posts from Sepia Saturday bloggers

 

An Up & End Boat, plus More Happy Couples - Sepia Saturday .

This week’s Sepia Saturday prompt image  show a happy couple  in a leafy setting,   sitting in front of an "up on end" boat - an ideal match from me with memories of my father’s childhood, plus some more happy couples. 

Among my uncle Fred Weston's collection was this photograph of Tommy Rogers of Ironbridge, Shropshire, the place often cited  as the birthplace of England's Industrial Revolution, and Tommy was a coracle maker.

                                    

 The world's first iron bridge, with  its 100 feet span  was built in 1779-1781 across the gorge of the River Severn.  However many local people  objected to paying the tolls, so they used coracles to cross the river instead.  

You might be wondering, where is the boat ? Well, it is on Tommy's back,  a loosely woven frame traditionally covered in animal hide, but in more recent times calico, canvas,  and coated with a substance such as bitumen.    

Tommy was a well known local character,  known as a poacher and the local newspaper regularly reported his appearance in court on poaching charges. He also helped to build the new police cells and court room in Ironbridge  - only to be one of the first people to appear there.  

My father, John Weston, grew up in Broseley  the other side of the river from Ironbridge.  He had very fond memories of his childhood there with his parents, Albert Ernest Weston and Mary Barbara Matthews, brothers Fred and Charles, and sister Madge.  My grandfather had a 35minute walk (one way), crossing the bridge to Coalbrookdale where he worked in the Power House.  

 

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More Happy Couples

                                      

A leafy background for this photograph of me with my father, taken in August 1965, shortly before I left home to work in the USA for a year. 

 

                   

                       My parents on their wedding day, 1938 

 

 

                                           

 

My parents a photograph taken 1965 on the day of my graduation from university.  I was the first member of the family to go to university, followed later by my brother - and they were so proud of us.  

 

 

                          

 Mum and Dad  with the telegram from the late Queen to mark their 60th wedding anniversary in  1998.  Sadly my mother died shortly afterwards.

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Sepia Saturday gives an opportunity for genealogy bloggers  

to share their family history and memories through photographs

 

                                                                                       

Click  HERE  to see  posts from other Sepia Saturday bloggers.

 

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Happy Twosomes: Sepia Saturday

Thus week's Sepia Saturday propmpt photograph shows  two women together, perhaops mother and daughter and is that a birthday cake by their side?    I had a trawl thriough my family collection to show lives in twosomes.  

 

My huisband's grandparents, Alice Armitage and Matthews Iley White of South Shields, County Durham, England   - this is believed to be their engagement photograph.   They married in 1906.  

 

 

An elegant wedding photograph of my cousin's Oldham relations  - Sarah Alice Oldham on her wedding to George Butler in Blackpool, Lancashire     and what a showy outfit - magnificently decorated large hat, stylish dress with frills and a large posy set off by  long broad ribbons!   Sarah came from a local family of carters and coal merchants  down three generations and George also worked in the business. Date 1907.  

 

My grest aunt Jennie Danson of Poultonb le Fylde, Lancahsire  married Bill Stemp in 1928  - there is no mistaking that period with her cloche hat and style of dress.

Family LIfe 

  

From my cousin's collection  -  charming picture of  Ellen Florence Coombs nee Hooker with her baby daughter  Hilda Florence. 

  

One of the oldest photograph in my collection shows, on the left, my aunt Edith and on the right my mother Kathleen - taken late 1908. The sisters were born one year and one week apart,  daughters of William Danson and Alice English of Poulton-le-Fylde, Lancashire.   Aunt Edith played an active role  as my godmother   and the sisters remained close all their lives, often photographed together.  

 

 One of my favourite photographs of my mother. This photograph means a lot of me, as my mother looks so happy and stylish, and I can  only remember Mum with grey hair worn  in a French pleat.  But the picture came as a surprise, as I had  never seen it before,   with no copy in the family album of my childhood.  Just before my marriage in 1971,  my  future husband and I were visiting an old family friend of my parents, when she brought out this picture and gave it to us.  I was delighted to have 

 

Following the deaths of both  my parents, I found a number of letters they exchanged in 1944, whilst my father was serving in the RAF as a Code and Cipher Clerk in France. In one letter, Dad asked for a "Photograph of Baby" - and this studio portrait was the result!

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Onto 1973 and here with my own daughter.  

 

Growing Older 

 

 My cousins in Blackpool - Stuart and Gloria Smith in the 1940s.  Their fair hair mirrored that of their father and grandfather.  

 

 

Another  happy picture from my cousin's collection.  The two girls in their knitted dresses  are Dorothy Lilla Oldham (1915-1989) and Edith Nancy Oldham  (1920-2012),  daughters of James William Oldham. and Edith Keymer.  James' parents had  emigrated to New Zealand in 1906 where they ran a wholesale tobacconists and stationery business on Karangahape Road,  Auckland.  

 

 

 

 

William Dower and his wife , ancestors of my cousin.  The emigrated to South Africa where William made a name for himself as a missionary.

Daughter and fond pet.

A lovely picture of my husband  and our pet cocker spaniel, Casmir - on the banks of Loch Etive , near Obam  in the Scottish Highlands

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A post written to the prompt Sepia Saturday to tell family history through photographs.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Early TV Memories - Sepia Saturday

This week's Sepia Saturday prompt photograph shows a man reclining in a chair by a television set.  I have chosen to look back at my own early  television memories.  

 

1953 was the year television came to our house in the shape of a small 10 inch screen Bush set, so we could watch the Queen Elizabeth’s II  Coronation on June 2nd.   I was nine years old and had been busy making red, white and blue decorations at school, creating a Coronation Scrapbook, collecting my Coronation Mug  (presented to all children)  and playing with the doll my talented mother had made for me -  dressed as the Queen with a white satin dress and long velvet purple train, embroidered in gold thread.  

 

Sadly I kept neither the doll nor the scrapbook   - something I much later regretted, but I still have the official  programme and the mug. 

 

 

 

       

 

So On the day itself we woke up to the news on the radio that Mount Everest had been conquered by Sir Edmnd Hilary and Sherpa Tensing.    We watched the coronation procession and ceremony on our new  black and white TV - one of the first in the  street, with a full household of my grandad, aunt, uncle and neighbours crowding round the small 10 inch screen.  I wore  my yellow taffeta party dress,  with its puff sleeves and long sash,  in honour of the occasion.

A few weeks later we all trooped in a long crocodile from school to a local cinema to see a film of the conquering of Everest (some of the scenes of men crossing deep ravines frightened me), followed by a film  of the coronation, this time  in glorious technicolour. 

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In those days, there was only one television channel and broadcasts were generally just in the evening, introduced by the announcers in dinner jackets (Macdonald Hobley) and evening dress (Sylvia Peters and Mary Malcolm) - talking in  what seemed very pucka la-di-da accents to someone from the North of England. If we switched on too early we got the test card with the little girl with long hair in the centre.  The interludes were as much a delight - the potter's wheel, or horses ploughing a field. 

 

Children's TV seemed to centre on puppets - Muffin the Mule and Sooty (with the spin off toys as Christmas present). I must surely have been too old for Andy Pandy, and Bill and Ben the Flower Pot Men, but perhaps saw them with my younger brother. The forerunner of family soaps The Grove Family and The Appleyards were also favourites; as were were Billy Bunter's Schooldays (I had a crush on Bob Cherry), George Lansdale from London Zoo on Looking at Animals, and Crackerjack, with its Double or Drop challenge. 

 

Saturday and Sunday were treats in that we had tea on the trolley around the television to watch such programmes as the Lone Ranger (Tonto and Hiya Silver!) and Circus Boy - my brother's favourites, and All Your Own presented by Huw Weldon and introducing talented youngsters.

 

Then there were the memorable BBC Sunday serials which we enjoyed so much as a family and which fostered my love of history, costume and reading the classics - Children of the New Forest, David Copperfield, Nicholas Nickelby, Tale of Two Cities, Great Expectations, Count of Monte Chrsto, Railway Children, Pride and Prejudice, Worzel Gummidge. Robin Hood, Emil and the Detectives, and The Silver Sword - which told the story of children caught up in Poland during the war - a time close enough to have meaning of what living during the war must have been like. 

 

When the new ITV channel first came on the scene, our old television could not receive it, so I missed out on the school gossip of the previous night's Emergency Ward Ten and Coronation Street, though once we got a new set, I later became fans along with the other soap Compact, set on a woman's magazine - I was an avid follower of that.

The BBC was the natural channel for current affairs and we always had the news on and special coverage to see Yuri Gargarin, the first man in space, the Amercan space launches, and ocean splash downs; major events such as royal weddings, funeral of Sir Winston Churchill,  assassination of John F. Kennedy. Robert Kennedy and Martin Luther King. By the time of the first man in the moon, we set the alarm to get up during the middle of the night to see the "first step", and then dashed into the garden to look up at the moon in the sky.

Two programmes my father absolutely refused to have on were the new satirical comedy show "That was the Week that Was" and irreverent comedy Till Death Us Part - the previews were enough for him to ban them. He always had to watch the current affairs programme Panorama - until they were showing a programme on maternity care when he suddenly decided this was not family viewing.

Pop Culture passed me by and I was never into it, though I remember 6.5 Special and Top of the Pops. Of course everything I saw was in black and white, and I did not see colour TV until 1970 which I think was when it reached Scotland. 

American programmes came into vogue:
Doctor Kildare - my favourite
Phil Silvers - my father's  favourite

Perry Como Show  
 Dick van Dyke Show
Jack Benny Show
George Burns and Gracie Allan
I love Lucy

But I was enough of a TV teenager to compile a scrapbook topour over, with cuttings of cast lists and photographs of my favourite actors and performers I had crushes on, 

 

 A hapapy family c. 1953

 

 

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Sepia Saturday gives an opportunity for genealogy bloggers  

to share their family history and memories through photographs

 

 

 

 

 

 

  

Click  HERE  to see  posts from other Sepia Saturday bloggers.

 

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