"We Must Go down to the Wood Today" - Sepia Saturday

This week's Sepia Saturday prompt features a vintage car in the distance against a scenic backdrop of trees and mountain.  

I focussed o.n the trees -  We have no shortage of trees  and woods in the Scottish Borders where I live - so enjoy these  calming scenes of nature at its best, whatever the season. 

 

 

  SPRING

 

 

 Woodland lane with the Black Hill in the background.

 

 

 

 Not a woodland, but one of my favourite Tree photographs.  On an April walk around Earlston looking east across to the Lammermuir Hills.

 

 

SUMMER

 

Having fun at Wolfcleuchhead Waterfall in Craik Forest, near Hawick. 
 

 

Looking across to the wooded White Hill, Earlston 

 

 

Trees over the Leader Water, Earlston 

  

 

 

  

 Two views of sunlight in Cowdenknowes Wood,  close to where I live and a regular favourite walk. 

 

 

AUTUMN

 

An array of Autumn colours 
 

 

 A carpet of Autumn leaves, with the Leader Water a streak of blue below.

Little  granddaughter enjoying a walk through the woods at Earlston. 

 

 Looking up at the colours of Autumn gold. 

 

 

Late Autumn in Millbank Woods, Earlston 

 

 

A woodland gateway in late autumn 

 

 

 

Autumn colours at Dawyk Gardens, near Peebles.   

 

 

 

 WINTER 

 2012 - my husband lending a touch of colour  to the winter woodland scene.

2012 - Little granddaughter trudging home in the snow, 

with the trees on the appropriately named  White  Hill ahead.  

 

 

 A winter wonderland by the Leader Water, Earlston 

 

                    

Daughter on the hill above our homer in Hawick. 

 

 

We are so lucky to live in such a beautiful  part of the country 

the Scottish  Borders  

 

Copyright © 2025  Susan Donaldson.  All Rights Reserved 

 

*********

 

And finally  - not  forgetting  the prompt picture  with that vintage car , here is a misty photograph from my cousin's collection 

 

 

 

 My cousin's first ever car - a 1932 Morris Mino. 

 

The photograph was taken near Inverary in the west of Scotland on the "Rest and Be Thankful Road"  -  It gets its name as it was once a place where people  would stop, rest and be thankful that they have reached the top of their climb through the hilly pass between two glens (valleys).    

 

It's a very popular viewpoint which follows the line of the old military road built in 1753 by General Wade and his soldiers after the unsuccessful  1745 Jacobite Rebellion to put Bonnie Prince Charlie on the throne.   Now notorious for landslips, heavy snowfalls in winter   and road closure  warnings, involving a long detour to get to the coast and the ferries to the islands.  

 

 

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

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

Click  HERE to see how cars, trees and mountains  this week have inspired  other bloggers

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

A "Must Have" Man's Accessory - A Pocket Watch: Sepia Saturday

A miner, a ship's riveter, a general labourer, two business men, a group of schoolboys and a station bookstall manager - all feature in my post for this week’s Sepia Saturday challenge.  What is the link?   They are all wearing pocket watches on a chain. 
  

This week's Sepia Saturday  prompt photograph shows a man, formally dressed,  standing across the wall of a house, with a chair nearby - well, I did "chairs" the other week   My eye caught the pocket watch chain that the man was wearing, so I turned to my family collection to see what I could find.  

Pocket watches were invented in the 16th century and were the most common type of watch  until the First World War and the introduction of wrist watches.  They  generally had an attached chain so they could be secured to a waistcoat, lapel or belt loop.  The casements varied from brass to gold, so they appealed to a range of budgets.  Pocket watches were often a prized family possession, passed down through the generations.   

 

I remember my grandfather wearing one on a Sunday with his best suit - but unfortunately I do not have any photograph of him wearing it.  

From the extended family of my cousin:

Edward Henry Coombs(1857-1922) was the great grandfather of my cousin' s wife.  In 1879 Edward  married 19 year old Ann Elizabeth Shaw and in 18 years, they had a large family of 10 children.   He was foounder of Coomb Bros - a wholesale brocery business and manufacture of sweets and jams in Essex.  

The period 1917-1918 was a tragic time for Edward,   with sons Percy and William killed in the First World War; the death of his wife  and of his daughter Lilian.  Edward died in 1922, aged 65.  

 

As you can see from this photograph, Edward was an extremely big man, said to take up two seats on a bus  - and his pocket watch is very evident in this photoraph.  

 

Anna Holt and Charles Oldham (c.1861-1937)  

 

Charles Oldham was brother of my cousin's great grandfather Joseph Prince Oldham (1855-1917).  Born in Blackpool, he joined the family business and in the 1891 census was described as a self-employed coal merchant. But by 1901 he had had a complete change of both address and occupation, setting up a mineral water manufacturing business in Wisbech, Cambridgeshire. Looking here very much like a serious businessman, and wearing his pocket watch and chain. 

 Wiiliam Dower (1837-1919) and his wife,  Jesse Edward. 

 

Jesse  who was sister to my cousin's great grandmother, married William Dower, born in Banchory, Aberdeenshire. William   worked as a joiner before training as a minister of the church.   He was appointed as a Wesleyan Missionary in South Africa and he and his new wife Jesse set sail there  in 1865. 

 

In March 1870, William and Jesse set out on an ox wagon journey to East Griqualand and the town of  Kokstad, where he was asked to take on the role of pastor.  William helped build both his own home and the church there.  He went on to write a definitive history of the area in "The early annals of Kokstad and Griqualand East".

The photograph above of  William Dower and his wife Jesse was taken in 1913 when they visited Jesse’s sister in Blackpool,  Lancashire.  

 

William died in Africa in 1919 at "Banchory"  - his home named after his Scottish birthplace.  He left behind a legacy in the country he had come to love and a family who made their mark i many different fields.  

 William Bailey Bastow - my mother's second cousin.

 

Elizabeth Bailey born in Poulton-le Fylde, Lancashire  was William's mother. She married Peter Bastow, a Blackpool stone mason, and they had three children.  But Peter could not have survived much beyond the birth of his youngest son in 1882, as by 1890 Elizabeth married her second husband Henry Robinson.   In the 1901 census William was described as stepson, 20 years old and a general labourer.

Here he is dressed formally in the traditional style of waistcoat and pocket watch.

From my husband's family:

 

 

Alice Armitage and Matthew Iley White  - 

my husband's grandparents of South Shields, County Durham.

Matthew (1886-1956) and Alice (1888-1967) married in 1908 and this photograph is thought to  mark their  engagement, with Matthew wearing a watch chain with the watch itself hidden in his waistcoat pocket. 

The couple had a background of mariners and miners.   Matthew, a ship's riveter,   was named after his father  Matthew Iley White;  his mother was  Louisa Moffat,and both came from a family of seafarers. 

Alice hailed from South Kirby, Yorkshire where her father Aaron Armitage (1851-1889)  was a miner, the eldest of a family of ten children born to Moses Armitage  and Sarah Galloway. 

Aaron aged 36 married  19 year old Sarah Ann Cuthbert in 1887 but within two  years he was dead,  leaving fatherless his infant only daughter Alice.   His widow Sarah remarried a year later another miner George Hibbert and the family moved to the Durham minefields, settling in South Shields.  The 1901 census saw the family there, with Alice now 13 years old with a step brother Robert and step sister Violet. The two half-sisters remained close throughout their lives.

 Moses Armitage, (1824-1878),  Alice's grandfather.  

 I was lucky to get this photograph from an Ancestry contact and it is the oldest photograph we have of my husband's ancestors. 

Moses was a Yorkshire miner  and in 1844  married Sarah Gallaway (1826-1896)  and in the next 20 years between 1845 and 1868  they had 10 children  in Barnsley.  It was a hard life both at work and home,   and  Moses, like his son Aaron,  made frequent appearances in the law courts,  because of their criminal activity  - well recorded in the local press.  

And Finally - photographs from my Danson family collection  of my great uncle George Danson (1884-1916).

Young George Danson, my great uncle is on the left of this group of  boys and  three of them are wearing watch chains, yet they look  only around 12-13 years old.

George has featured many times on my blog.  He was the youngest of eight sons  of William Danson and Alice English of Poulton-le-Fylde, Lancashire and worked on railway station bookstalls, run my W.H. Smith.  He served as a stretcher bearer in the First World War and was killed on the Somme in 1916,. aged just 22.  

Is this the same watch  - found in a box of Danson memorabilia?

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

 

Adapted from an earlier post published in 2018.   

Sepia Saturday gives bloggers an opportunity

to share their family history through photograph

 

 

 Click  HERE to see more of this week's tales from 

Sepia Saturday bloggers. 

 

 

****************************** 

 

 

 

Swans, Rivers & Bridges - Sepia Saturday

 

 This week's Sepia Saturday prompt photograph features swans on a river bank, with a bridge in the background.  What should I  focus on ?  A trawl through my holiday collections - not vintage images but with plenty of historical interest.   

 

 I begin with the Swan theme.  

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Swans and Cygnets at Hawick in the Scottish Borders where we lived for 40 years.  

Across to the Continent of Europe 

 

18th century  Nymphenburg Palace , Munich, Bavaria 

 

 This was the birthplace of King Ludwig ll of Bavaria who was often referred to as the Swan King and adopted the Swan as one of his symbols.

 

 

 

 One of the most distinctive and most visited places  in Bavaria, Southern Germany  has to be Neuschwanstein  Castle.  (in Engish the New Swan Stone  Castle.

 

Built in the 19th century above the Swansee (Swan Lake) it served no defensive purpose, but was  one of four fantastic castles commissioned by King Ludwig.  It was opened to the public shortly after his death in 1886; provided the inspiration for the Disneyland castle, and features in the film "Chitty, Chitty Bang Bang". You  can walk through the extensive grounds and this photograph was taken from the high outlook of the Mariabrucke (Maria bridge).

 

Swan boats on the Hallstatter See, near Salzburg  in Austria.

 

 

 Swan boats on Lake Bled in Slovenia 

Take a journey through my photographic collection of bridges & rivers across Europe and the USA.  

 

Ramsau  was designated Germany's first mountaineering village  and is a small community  near Berchtesgarten in Bavaria, close to the  Austrian border.   The church of St. Sebastian was built in 1512 and extended in 1692 in the baroque style.   Ramsau  is one of the most photogenic images of rural Bavaria and this has to be one of my favourite holiday photographs.  

 

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

An old bridge in Bruges, Belgium.

 

Another old bridge, taken by my uncle on holiday years ago in what was then Yugoslavia - now Croatia.  

 

  

Bridges over the River Seine in Paris.  
 

A reconstruction of the old wooden North Bridge at Concord, Massachusetts, USA,   where in 1775 local Minutemen fired the first shot in the American War of Independence and forced the British to retreat back to Boston. 

 A  traditional covered wooden bridge in New Hampshire, New England.

London  

Tower Bridge over the River Thames in London with HMS Belfast in the foreground. 

 

Tower Bridge is one of London's iconic landmarks built in the Victorian Gothic style.  It was opened in 1894, with two walkways linking the two towers.   The road can be raised and  "opened" to allow tall shipping to pass through.  The Bridge is open to the public and you can walk along the top glass-covered walkway and take in fantastic views over London - we have done it!

 

 

HMS Belfast, launched in 1938 is a cruiser that was built for the Royal Navy. The ship saw active service during the Second World War, primarily supporting the Arctic Convoys on the trade routes to Russia.   She is now permanently moored as a visitor attraction museum on the River Thames.  

 

Westminster Bridge over the River Thames with the Houses of Parliament in the background, wsith the clock tower of Big Ben.  

 

The current Houses of Parliament, also known as the Palace of Westminster, was rebuilt after a major fire in 1834.  The oldest part of the building which survived the fire is Westminster Hall built in 1097 by William ll,  son of William the Conqueror and used for national ceremonial occasions and the lying in state  of Kings and Queens.  

 

The first Westminister Bridge opened in 1750, with the second in 1862.  It is the oldest road structure which crosses the Thames in central London. 

 

 "Earth has not anything to show more fair" is the first line of a poem composed by William Wordsworth on Westminster Bridge in 1802. 

A silhouette of the Houses of Parliament with the River Thames in the foreground. 

 **************

 

 

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

 

   Click HERE to see what other bloggers have spotted in this week's prompt photograph.