Blackpool In October

Who would go to Blackpool in October, when there was a wind blowing and rain lashing down? Once there, who would possibly want to ride a donkey on the sands? Miriam Fieldhouse would. Photograph taken by Frank Fieldhouse, October 1951,

Talking To Gladys On The Sands

Scanning and retouching old photographs is a little like doing a jig-saw puzzle - it allows you to get up close to detail. Cast a passing glance at a photograph from eighty-odd years ago - you can use this photograph of my mother, Gladys, on the seaside sands as an example - and you might notice the main subject or the approximate location, and then you move on to something else entirely like making a cup of tea or watching Coronation Street. When you are scanning and retouching however, you dedicate time to detail - the shape of the handbag, the activity of the crowds in the background, the pattern of the dress. You sit down and talk to the people and share memories.

Killing Three Birds With A Sea Urchin

My brother Roger sent me an email earlier today complementing me on the new Blog lay-out, and asking me to try and feature more of my old negatives and more old family photographs. I am able to kill two birds with one stone because, by chance, the next strip of negatives awaiting scanning features family members - indeed, none other than my brother himself. The six photographs on the negative strip are featured in the composite image below, and they were all taken during a family holiday to Scotland in the 1960s. 

The featured photograph at the top of this post shows Roger in a rowing boat, on - I think - Loch Levan, and holding a sea urchin shell which he had just pulled from the Loch. I am not entirely sure of the year - my best guess was 1963 - but by featuring the photograph here, there is a good chance that a comment will appear from my brother on the other side of the world, identifying the time precisely. Thus I will be able to date the negatives and kill three birds with one simple negative stone.

Kate From Keighley

CATHERINE KELLAM (1877-1960)

This picture of my grandmother, Catherine "Kate" Kellam, must  have been taken in 1901 or 1902. At the time of the 1901 census she was living in Middlesborough, working as a waitress in a coffee house. By April 1903 she had settled in Keighley and married my grandfather, Albert Beanland. As far as I can discover she moved to Keighley in the latter part of 1901 or 1902 and became a waitress in a local hotel. The portrait must date from this period - and the black formality of her clothing was probably influenced by the death of Queen Victoria in 1901.

Sepia Saturday 382 : Tempus Fugit And A Fish Supper

When you have been penning blogposts for more than ten years, you sometimes think that you are all "blogged-out". If you are capable of saying it, you suspect you have already said it. In the case of old images, if they are able to be found and digitised, you suspect you have already found them, scanned them and presented them to the world. When I saw this week's Sepia Saturday theme image, which featured a host of young people in a gymnasium showing off their graceful carriage, I immediately thought of an old family photograph which had been taken in a school hall which also featured graceful young people. 

I felt sure, however, that I must have featured it before on Sepia Saturday and blog-searched back until I found a post from September 2010, analysing the image in question. Although the analysis was  thorough and as incisive as anything I could write now, the strange thing was that the piece was illustrated by the wrong photograph. In place of the wall-remembered photograph of five children there was another photograph which had obviously been taken at the same time and in the same school hall.

Just how this mix-up happened, I have no idea, but it sent me off in search of the two photographs so that I could look at them again and possibly rescan them. This was, as always, a lengthy and complex business: sifting through boxes, folders, and albums; all of which I aspire to call the family archives. Eventually I found them and the effort involved justified their inclusion in my Sepia post this week. It is true that at least one of them has been featured in my blog before. It is true that I have no great revelation about their provenance to share with you. What I have come to realise, however, is that scanning and displaying old photographs is a little like fishing. It is the thrill of the chase which attracts you rather than the fish supper at the end of the day. You can spend a happy hour or two dangling your line into the pool of history and eventually fish out a couple of lovely old images. And then, just as happily, you can throw them back into the shoebox of time, so that you can enjoy the whole process again, seven years later.

To see what others have done with this week's prompt image, go to the Sepia Saturday Blog and follow the links.

It's That Child Again

It's that child again. Well, I think it's that child again, but I am not sure. It might be him or it might be his brother. "te ipsum" said the Romans; and the Greeks said the same thing even earlier (but their interpretation of the phrase is a character set too far), but how can you know thyself after a period of almost seventy years and a stone or two of living. It should be me. The child is laughing and I was always the one with an inane grin on my face. No doubt my brother will write in and say it is a photograph of him and not me. But I don't believe it - he was never as bonny as me.

Sepia Saturday 342 : Shouting Love In Sepia

Our Sepia Saturday theme this month is "love and marriage" and whilst last week I focussed on the second half of this couplet, today I am looking at the first half - love. 

And if this old, faded photograph of my parents - Albert and Gladys - says anything it says love. It shouts it through the sepia salts, roars it through the cracks and creases of the tiny print. 

You can set this old print next to any million pixel, super high definition digital image fresh from the most mobile of smart phones. You can put it up against the sharpest razor sharp print, the perfectly balanced colour profile, the most competently composed composition. 

And still this old and faded photo would win. It screams love - love that can overcome the ravages of time.

This month our theme is LOVE AND MARRIAGE. See all the posts by visiting the Sepia Saturday Blog and following the links.

Sepia Saturday 341 : It's Just The Way It Changes Like The Shoreline And The Sea

Our Sepia Saturday theme image this week features a rowing boat deep underground at the Speedwell Caverns in Derbyshire. I am keeping the boat but moving up a few hundred feet and featuring a picture of my mother leaning against a rowing boat in her favourite location of all - where the shoreline meets the sea. I featured another picture of Gladys a couple of days ago on what would have been her 105th birthday. This photograph must have been taken thirty years before the Blackpool picture and the location has changed to Shanklin in the Isle of Wight. My mother has changed as well - changed into this slim fashionable woman of the 1930s. But when you are looking from the perspective of time, change is a function that exists irrespective of the direction of travel.

To see other changes, take a visit to the Sepia Saturday Blog and see what other old photographs people have discovered.

The Clayton Cousins

It's Friday and therefore it must be Family History Day. The theme for today is The Clayton Cousins. So let's start with some context : the three cousins who lived in Clayton near Bradford were Ada, Ellen and Clara Beanland and the picture above shows them in about 1904. They were the children of Arthur Beanland (1866-1944) - my mothers' Uncle Arthur - and his second wife, Emma Binns (1861-1929). Arthur B was born in Keighley but at the time of this photograph, he was living in Clayton and, by the time of the 1911 census, the family were living at 9, Pasture Side, Clayton. In 1911, the eldest of the girls (Ada on the right in the picture above) was working as a worsted spinner.

So here we have these three girls born around the turn of the century (Ada in 1897, Ellen in 1899, and Clara in 1901), the daughters of a mill mechanic and his wife, growing up with the century : a century which would see more concentrated social and economic changes than any previous period of human history. The years of their childhood must have been years of massive hope and expectation - the British Empire was at its zenith, Bradford was still the centre of the world's wool industry, the first motor cars were bumping their way along Clayton High Street and the newspapers would have been full of man's early attempts at flight. What future would these girls have in front of them? What adventures, what loves, what lives?

The answer is strangely muted. All three lived into adulthood : Ada was the last to die and that was in the 1970s. She is the only one I remember, the other two sisters died whilst I was still a child. Cousin Ada attended our wedding in 1973 but all I remember was a little old lady with a funny hat and very little to say.

Not one of the three sisters ever married and they lived throughout their lives together in a small terraced house in Clayton. When Ada eventually died I remember going with my mother to the house and discovering plain rooms devoid of any personal effects and the walls of the kitchen and staircase white-washed. I believe all three sisters were members of the Plymouth Brethren sect and regular attenders at their chapel. They had a reputation within the family of plain living and parsimony.

But what was the story of their lives? What led them down the strange path they took? Were there no loves, were there no dreams? They had no children and I suppose that I am the last of the family to remember them. It is therefore unlikely that I will ever know anything more than the bare words on the census forms. If I want to know the story of their lives, it looks like I will have to make it up.

Picture Of The Day : Albert and Kate

The picture shows my grandfather (Albert Beanland) and my grandmother (Kate Beanland née Kellam). Albert died in the year of my birth, but Kate lived until 1956 and I can just about remember her. She was born in Rutland in 1877 the second daughter of Albert Kellam and Catherine Moody. Kate's father - a grocer living in South Wales - died when she was just 14 and her mother quickly married again to a certain John Robinson Thickpenny (whom, I am sure, I have written about before). Kate didn't get on with her step-father and she left home and became a waitress. It was whilst working as a barmaid at, I believe, the Bottomley's Arms in Keighley that she met my grandfather, Albert. Just thought it would be nice to put a story to a couple of faces.

This, by the way, is the 500th post to the News From Nowhere Blog. Happy anniversary.

I Liked Right Well

The postcard is from Uncle Fowler's collection and shows Fleet Street in Bury, Lancashire. It is from Eliza Beanland, Fowler's sister, who was working in Lancashire during the Great War (Fowler and Eliza's brother, Albert, was my Grandfather). As far as I can make out Fleet Street no longer exists - I don't know Bury very well - but if I am wrong I am sure someone will point out my error. Perhaps the most interesting aspect of the card is the message on the reverse in my Great Aunt Eliza's spidery hand. It reads as follows:

Dear Brother, Just a line to say I arrived allright. I went to the New Church at Haywood last night and I liked right well, Mrs Land went with me, and they were a man and woman sat with us and they gave us an invitation to their house. With love, Eliza.

In its own way this message is just as fascinating as the messages from the Venetian Ambassador I wrote about yesterday. It tells not of the death of powerful monarchs but the day-to-day lives of ordinary people. Wonderful stuff.

Picture Of The Day : The Royal Geoff's

This picture was tucked away in a tin box which was amongst the possessions of my mother (Gladys). On the reverse is the following inscription in pencil : "Two pleasant looking brutes, eh Gladys. Taken out in the Western Ocean"  The final line is more difficult to read but seems to say "One of the Royal Geoff's". So did my mother have a friendship with a regal sailor? If anyone recognises their great-great grandfather, please let me know.

Who Do You Think You Are In The Rain?

Went to Liverpool yesterday on a whim and a Trans-Pennine Express. Isobel was going to a conference on some dreadful disease and I decided to travel over with her and have a wander around. If it had been a plan rather than a whim I would have carefully re-read the family history file before departing and made a list of places to visit. But it was a whim and therefore all I had with my was my MP3 player and a bag of crisps. Such is the start of all great adventures.

I caught a bus to Crosby which is about six miles north of the city and the place where Isobel's Great Grandfather, William Henry Usher, was born. It was grey and cold and I cursed my lack of preparation as I tramped around the graveyard of St Luke's Church looking for any friendly Ushers. Eventually I decided to abandon the exercise and head for the nearest pub, but on the way I found a small bookshop which was advertising a slim volume on the history of Great Crosby, entitled "Mills, Mollies and Marl Pits : The Story Of The Township Of Great Crosby" by John Cochrane. By now it was raining heavily and therefore clutching a slightly damp copy of the book, I headed for the pub on the corner. And there I found the following passage on page 63.

"In 1912 Cooks Lane, which now started from Victoria Road, was renamed Manor Road with great plans for the extension of the Crosby housing stock over the fields to the right and left. At this time the only building to the north of the brick works was White Cottage owned by the local farming family the Somervilles. It is often called Somerville Cottage. In 1866 Henry Usher and his family moved their rope making business from Liverpool to Crosby. They settled at No. 13 Alma Vale and established the business in Cooks Lane roughly between where Manor Drive and St Michaels Road now run. It consisted of a long barn-like structure where the long lengths of twine could be stretched and plaited to form the necessary thickness of rope. This type of building was known as a rope walk. In 1871 Henry moved over Liverpool Road to York Road and in the early 1880s he was joined by Levi, who moved into No. 3 Lune Street, and Thomas who lived at No. 13 Hornby Street. Henry left the firm in 1890 and it was then run as Levi and Thomas Usher with an office at 89 Victoria Road until 1894 when it was taken over by the rope makers Radcliffe and Brown. This became S.J Radcliffe and Company in 1898 and had one of the earliest telephone numbers, Waterloo 231. By 1904 the rope walk was no more."

Now all this, I am sure you will agree, is very fascinating, but it raises more questions than it answers. Henry Usher can't "have left the firm in 1890" as he had died two years before. It must have been his son William Henry (brother of Levi and Thomas) who left the firm and this was Isobel's Great Grandfather. And where exactly was the ropeworks? According to family sources it was in Coronation Road, but according to the book it was much further north on Manor Road. Any attempt to conduct further research was curtailed by the fact that it was pouring it down so I found a bus and headed back to the city centre with the determination to return when the sun was shining and my notebooks were with me.

I know that this might not sound like an adventure to you, but when you are getting on in life and walking the dog is the high spot of the day, it was an exciting day out to me. What else is there to do but to stay at home waiting for Swine Flu?

Could Eunice and Leslie Please Contact Me

I got this new Family Tree software package for Christmas. It is all very swish and organised and allows you to attach images to the various records. Thus, in addition to knowing that your Great Aunt Ruth Annie was born in September 1874, you can gaze into her sepia eyes (or you could if you had a photograph of her). Searching for such a photograph I dipped into one of those old cardboard boxes that are a part of most of our households. I couldn't find anything which could possibly have been Ruth Annie, but I did find two photographs of Eunice and Leslie. I know it is Eunice and Leslie because each photograph is signed on the back. One is dedicated to Peggy and the other to Eddy. My problem is that I haven't the slightest idea who Eunice and Leslie are.

From the cut of their jib they look far too posh for my immediate family. Those round eyeglasses give an almost intellectual appearance to Leslie and you can also tell that he is a man used to wearing a tie. As for Eunice, she looks like someone who is unfamiliar with the daily grind of housework. That suspicious cast to her lower face makes me mindful of a Librarian. The "Peggy" of the dedication is most likely my Aunty Annie (always known as Peggy) and I believe that her husband (Harry) had a brother called Eddy. The picture was taken by the Jerome Company of Manchester, if that helps.

So do me a favour Eunice and Leslie if you are out there. Drop me an e-mail and let me know who you are and how come we know you. I can file you away in the correct data set then.