Grandma's 1930s Photo Album Part 2

The second and final instalment from this particular photograph album that was kept by my paternal grandparents.

I'll start with this one. It is undated but my Dad is there - Allan Burke, aged probably one-year-old and certainly no more than two so I'd guess 1933. His brother, my Uncle Geoff, was born in May 1933 and he does not appear in the photo, so either he wasn't yet born or my Grandma, Annie Burke, didn't trust any of the kids to hold him securely. Dad is held I think by Doris Woolfenden who would be his cousin once removed - the daughter of his Great-Aunty Florrie. They are in front of the door on the back row.

There are very few photos of Allan and Geoff playing with other children. Dad always said that Annie viewed most of the other children in the street as "a bit rough..." and discouraged her two sons from mingling. I suppose you have to bear in mind that she had lost three children in childbirth or infancy before Allan survived. It may have made her a bit over-protective.

August 1935. Allan, Annie and Geoff on the beach somewhere. The date is the only caption so I'm not sure where this is. They are paddling in a pool on the beach and I note Dad is wearing sandals in case of broken glass. I'm not sure those knitted romper suits would stand up well to being immersed in the sea somehow...

Happily they make it off the beach with gussets intact and have a go on what looks like some kind of racing game. If only they were tall enough to see what was going on!

Taken on Allan's third birthday in April 1935. I've no idea where this is either, but he has a satisfied and brave smile on his face despite the large piece of gauze plastered to his knee, the trophy of some endeavour or adventure!

Allan and Geoff with an unknown child between them on my grandad's Ariel motorbike. Enthusiasts may drool over this bike now but apparently it backfired once whilst my grandad (also called John Burke) was kick-starting it. It broke his ankle and he sold it soon afterwards.

Allan and Geoff on a more easily managed roundabout somewhere. No clues are given - it could be at the seaside somewhere or at their local beauty spot of Hollingworth Lake where there was a small fairground and amusement arcade.

Geoff in what I take to be a pedal car. The year is now 1936. Those look to be a serious pair of boots he's wearing...

This tricycle had started out as Allan's as another photo exists of him much younger riding it. Now he is riding pillion behind Geoff round the back of the house. The gasworks can be seen on the far right.

Tired out by their efforts - Geoff pedalling to go faster and Allan dragging his feet to keep the speed down - the boys take a breather on the doorstep. Ah... scratch that, there's no door... on the pavement then!

Geoff with my Great-Uncle Percy on a carousel. Once again there's no clue as to where this was taken.

Geoff on Church Street, Rochdale near the gas works. Up until my own teens my Great-Grandma Maggie Brierley and her sister Great-Gt-Aunty Florrie still lived on Church Street and the smell from the gas works was a bit whiffy to say the least! I never knew my Great-Grandad. Fred Brierley had died in 1949.

This looks like Southport boating pool. John holds onto both his sons who are eager to play with their model boats to the point of going in head first... If you look carefully at the far end of the pool you can see that it has a curved end and then immediately gets wider. I remember as a small boy holding onto the mast of my toy yacht and watching it cut through the water as I ran around the end of the pool. I reached the wider bit and plunged straight in up to my waist... My Mum was extremely annoyed but I think Dad thought it rather funny...

Somewhere else I recognise! Blackpool beach, just south of the South Pier. Annie is with both her sons and her parents, Maggie and Fred.

Allan with his Aunty Elsie, Annie's sister and wife of Percy who we saw on the carousel a bit earlier. Both John and Percy had motorcycle and sidecar combinations.

Allan and Geoff paddling in a pool. No idea where this is either. It's not deep enough for the pool at Southport, which in any case is not bordered by hedges. Answers on a comment or on a postcard please...

And we finish this article - and the album - with a photo of my Daddy in 1938. The pier looks like Blackpool's North Pier.

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Grandma's 1930s Photo Album Part 1

Once again we are diving into the photographic memories of my Grandparents. This time it is my father's side of the family and the timing is ripe for some family photos of Dad as a baby and little boy. He was born Allan Burke in 1932 and was joined by a brother, Geoffrey, the following year.

The vast majority of photographs in the album are just 8 x 6 cm (3 x 2.25 inches). Exposures are all over the place, cameras in those days did not work out the correct exposure for you, you had to buy a seperate piece of equipment to do that and then set the camera manually. If indeed the camera gave you a choice... Some are dark, some are too light, some look as though they were taken during a thick fog. In all cases I've cleaned them up as best I can and for consistency have converted all to the same shade of sepia.

Let's open the pages to a period between the two World Wars, when the family transport was my Grandad's motor bike and sidecar. He was John Burke also - I was named after him. His wife, my Grandma was Annie.

At the start of the album are a few photos from 1926. From left to right they are: Percy Alston, the husband of Annie's sister, my Great-Auntie Elsie; then there is Annie; Annie's and Elsie's aunt, my Great-Gt-Auntie Florrie; an unknown child who is perhaps destined to remain a mystery now I imagine; Great-Auntie Elsie; and finally my Grandad, John, often known as Johnny Burke.

Here Percy has taken over the camera from the unknown gent next to the end. Perhaps Auntie Florrie's boyfriend - she never married but did have a child, a girl out of wedlock, causing a bit of a kerfuffle I should imagine at the time. I imagine the boy is the chap's son. Family tradition has it that he (the chap not the son... well both of them I suppose, actually) vanished out of Florrie's life. We don't know his name or the reason for his leaving, it's possible he was already married I suppose.

The two sisters and their boyfriends, later husbands, obviously got on well together at the time and went on many outings and holidays together. Love those plus fours, Grandad!

Ok, so now we move from the 1920s into the 1930s, starting in July 1932. Annie is holding her three-month-old son Allan - my Daddy to be... Three children had been born before him, all either stillborn or who died after just a few days of life.

Allan with his father, John. I'm tempted to think of the day being that of his Christening, although the album does not give any such information.

The following year Allan gained a brother, Geoffrey.

They are photographed outside the house on Church Street, Rochdale. Just a short way down the street was Rochdale Gas Works, with it's huge circles of girders holding the gas storage containers. During my own childhood, although my grandparents had since moved, the street was still home to my Great-Grandma, Maggie Brearley and her sister Auntie Florrie. My great-grandma was always "Grandma Brearley", I don't think I even knew her first name until these albums emerged following Uncle Geoff's passing a few years ago. For some unknown reason he always claimed that there were no old family photographs existing.

A few months later in 1933, Allan and Geoff are playing with what I hope are pebbles rather than eggs, again outside of the house in the fresh air.

Geoff had dark red hair against my Dad's blonde. Here he's playing with a model aircraft. I remember during my own childhood that my dad and uncle were keen builders of balsa wood aeroplanes with tissue fabric and engines that either flew the planes in circles on a set of control lines or that just flew off until the fuel (or a twisted rubber band) ran out.

Family picnic in the park. It looks as though Geoff is not enjoying himself to the full here...

August 1934. Outside the house again. There was very little traffic to worry about in the 1930s and most deliveries would still be carried out on horse-drawn carts or by bicycle. Church Street had a quite steep gradient. I remember Dad telling me once how he used to go sledging down the snow-covered cobbles in winter and how they would always come a cropper because of one woman who insisted on throwing her hot ashes from the fire out into the road to melt the snow in front of her house!

Sitting on the doorstep. Talking of coming a cropper it looks like Geoff has got a bandage and plaster wrapped round his knee. No being soft in those days. Cut knees were cleaned with water and carbolic soap then purple iodine applied which stung enough to make you forget how you came by the injury in the first place...

On the swings at the local park. Geoff is making a bid for freedom whilst Allan is looking very studious about something - or perhaps just wanting his Dad to stop taking photos and give him a push...!

And we come to the end of this article - but not of the photo album - with a view of the boys on the beach at Blackpool, whose South Pier with its distinctive gap under the decking before a row of criss-crossed ironwork gives away the location. The date is given as July 1934, the album has a few years to go yet.

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A 1930s Courtship

We are heading back almost 100 years for this blog entry, to a collection of photographs from the late 1920s to the 1930s. They come from the collection of my maternal grandparents, Frank and Eva Metcalfe whose romance led to marriage.

12 July 1932 was the date of their matrimonial joining. The bridesmaids are Frank's sisters, Nora and Muriel. Groomsman, Cecil Mercer, Eva's step-brother is on the left and Best Man was Ivan Taylor. Eva's step-father is on the right.

Most of these photographs have been scanned from the tiny enprints held in a photograh album of the time. Some of them showed signs of much wear and tear. I've done my best!

They show a loving relationship between Frank and Eva that lasted until 1971 when Eva passed away at the age of 65 having developed multiple sclerosis which over a very short time robbed her of mobility, speech and the ability to swallow.

This and the previous photograph were taken at one of their favourite places, the Promenade lake at St Annes, near Blackpool.

Frank's parents, Frank senior who I remember as my only great-grandfather still living during my lifetime and his wife, Anne-Marie, who I never knew.

Eva's family, my Great-Grandmother Eleanor Mercer and her second husband Mr Mercer, whose forename I don't know. My Gt-Grandfather was called Holcroft - again I don't know his forename.

Oy! Will you two stop flirting and pay attention to the camera?!?

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Wells and District, September 2020

Monday 7 September 2020. Agh... the dark days of Covid. The lockdown had been lifted and we wanted to get out of the house for a few days and motored down to spend a weekend at an ex-colleague's B&B in Dulcote just outside Wells in Somerset.

We had spent a similar long weekend there in 2015 and were looking forward to a nice relaxing time, not rushing about, but staying fairly close with Weston-Super-Mare being the farthest we would wander away from our base. Here is a sketch of the White House. It was good to be back here and we knew that Mary and her family would look after us well.

Bob the dog was a new (to us) member of Mary's household and soon got used to me and even Maggie the timid cat came onto my knee. "It's like having Dr Doolittle here!" Mary said in surprise as Bob replaced Maggie and started stroking my face with his paw.

We headed out to Cheddar, where we found a little cafe to have lunch in and I filled in the foliage around the side of the sketch. The waitress thought it "very pretty!".

The caves were all closed, as were many of the small shops. Fran had a wander as I started another sketch of a row of tiny cottages. It started to rain as I was doing this, gently at first but after Fran had come back to me it came down in earnest and we upped sticks and found refuge under the awning of a pub beer garden where a Guinness helped me complete the sketch!

On our way down to Dulcote we had passed the Rock of Ages a huge cleft rock face set into the hills near Burrington and Blagdon. I had seen signs for it many times whilst driving to and from Blagdon when visiting the software house EMIS who produced our college software in the early days, but had never cut down the road to see it.

An inscription from the 1950s tells how the Reverend A.M. Toplady sheltered here from a storm and was inspired to write the famous hymn, Rock of Ages in the mid 1700s.

Tuesday 8 September 2020. The morning started a bit weird as I had found a tyre going down last night and booked the car in to have it looked at in Wells. What would have been a 15 to 20 minute job at our usual garage turned out to be a 2 hour job in Wells as the place was extremely busy. No matter, we looked round the shops and Fran found a sewing shop that Mary had been raving about.

Then once we had the car back we went into Weston-Super-Mare and had lunch there. It took a while to find a place as all cafes were having to ensure social distancing due to the Covid 19 epidemic and smaller cafes were just not open. Needless to say the ones that were open were very full. Once fed we had a walk along the pier - they still charge for this and were insisting that people wore face masks in the fresh open air along it...(?) Ah well. Then a walk along the Promenade and then a hop in the car to Burnham on Sea before heading back to Wells, filling the car with petrol and buying a sandwich in Morrisons.

On our way home we stopped in a forestry car park on the road from the Rock of Ages as I had seen this field that looked like a barrow field. It was misty and a bit cool and I left Fran sitting in the car to find the field looking more like a naturally lumpy field. However it did have a short row of stones marking the border with the road and forming a gateway for the path leading into the field.

I was really in two minds. It had too many humps and lumps to be both a barrowfield or a natural occuring feature.

This one looked promising, but sadly isn't included in maps of Somerset tumuli that I looked at once back at home.

Wednesday 9 September 2020. We went back into Wells for some lunch and then a sit in the Bishop's Garden, where I drew the gatehouse whilst Fran went back around the shops and a market. A woman braved the transfer of any plague-like germs to have a look at what I was doing and said she'd come back later as she wanted to see how I'd cope with the archway. In the event I coped alright with the archway, though the two sides to the gatehouse should really be the same width as each other...

Then it was back to Mary's to spend our final afternoon relaxing in the garden.

Bob comes to sit with me for a bit but then goes off to lie down near the kitchen door when I stop paying him constant attention!

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