Our theme image this week features a parade through the streets of Rotherham in the early 1980s, and my matched image features a parade through the streets of Northowram - a village a couple of miles north of Halifax - in the mid 1960s. This was the same village I grew up in, and looking back at this strip of negatives taken fifty years ago is a little like marching backwards through my life. I used to walk up this road to my Junior School every day, and I was familiar with every cottage and every donkey-stoned doorstep. I can particularly remember that magnificent stone wall that can be seen on the right of the photograph, which is now, alas, long gone. It was a dry stone wall of significant proportions, and this meant that you could slide certain stones out, and use the space behind them as hiding places for all kinds of childhood trophies. I remember secreting a series of love-letters written by the ten year old me to the equally ten year old Maureen Brown. When the wall was finally demolished (long after I had moved away from the village), were these letters found and were they perhaps passed on to the said Miss Brown? The internet is such a powerful tool of communication, no doubt I will get an answer to this question within days!
To get other answers to sepia questions, go to the Sepia Saturday Blog and follow the links.
Great photo and post. A shame about that historic wall. I will bet the demolition workers found and read your letters, if they survived the weather. You probably made their day!
ReplyDeleteWe should probably check eBay for those antique letters.
ReplyDeleteTen years old, eh? I'd like to read those letters myself!
ReplyDeleteYou will definitely have to let us know if you hear anything about those letters! What a hoot!! Nice picture, too. :)
ReplyDeleteYou have a wonderful talent for finding unexpected aspects of photographs. I have ancestors who lived in Northowram at one stage in the 1840s.
ReplyDeleteOh how romantic you were at 10! I was dismayed by a first kiss at 9, stolen in the cloak room of the 4th grade class, not to become romantic until at least 6th grade. Your secret letters live on, at least here in your post, and perhaps Miss Brown will find out about them finally.
ReplyDeleteYou mean you wrote the letters and then hid them and never gave them to her? I hope she got them when they tore the wall down.
ReplyDeleteSounds like a tale of Love's Labour's Lost. And is that a wizard or a priest following the drum and bugle band?
ReplyDeleteDo let us know if you find Miss Brown.
ReplyDeleteThe Penalty of living so far away from the coast....Messages in a Bottle not really an option.......
ReplyDeleteActually sounds like something out of Spy novel. Yorkshire's own ( Junior)John Le Carre!