Family Memories

The other day I got a message from a distant relative attached as a comment to this photograph at Flickr.

The photo shows my grandparents, John and Annie Burke, getting married. From the left is Percy Alston, with his soon to be wife, Elsie, the bride's sister.

On the right is Jim Ivory, who I never knew and the groom's sister, Mary who was always known as Cissie.

The message was from someone descended from the sister of my Great-Grandma, who we called Grandma Brierley.

Here she is on the left of the photo taken Boxing Day 1966, my Great-Great-Auntie Florrie with her sister, Great-Grandma Brierley in the centre and my Great-Auntie-Cissie on the right. Percy Alston, by then my Great-Uncle, is in the rear of the photo, not quite getting enough illumination from the Instamatic camera's flash-cube!

Auntie Elsie and Uncle Percy retired to a lovely bungalow on the banks of the River Lune at Overton, which is where we see Elsie and Florrie on this photo, scanned from a rather washed out snapshot from 1972.

The bungalow had a 1/3 of an acre of garden, mostly lawn and I remember regular visits up there to mow the lawn using Uncle Percy's motor lawn mower.

And finally, here's my Dad with Great-Grandma Brierley sitting on that very same lawn in 1968.