Auntie's Album 1934 - 1949

Auntie Dorothy was born in Banbury after the Great War - one of the post WWI "baby boom".   Granddad was a butler and Gran a ladies maid for the Grazebrook family at Overthorpe House.  A year later a brother, Arthur, was born.  My mother was the eldest of the children having been born a few weeks before the start of WWI.

In the mid-1920s the family moved to Kingsmead in Windsor with Granddad being employed by Algernon Cox, a banker.  The photo on the right shows Auntie in her school uniform.  Throughout her life she cringed when she looked at this photo because one side of her collar was caught beneath the neckband of her gymslip - she always reproached herself for not having noticed it before the photo was taken.

With only a year between them Dorothy and Arthur were inseparable

But then came the war and Arthur enlisted with the RAF

 Arthur was reported missing over the Lybian Desert 21st. November 1941

I have a feeling that my Mum never excepted the fact that her young brother had died.  I had never known my uncle but as a child I picked up on my mother's thoughts and whenever there was a knock on the door I think we both half expected it to be Arthur.

After the war Dorothy went on a cycling tour of France and this is where she was to meet her future husband, Dennis.  

They married in Streatham

The smallest child in the group photograph is ME!

One of my earliest memories is of the wedding and of eating ice-cream - 

a rare treat so soon after the war.

The Soldier's Album

I was a quiet child preferring to snuggle up in a chair with a good book rather than play with other children in the neighbourhood.   Perhaps it was just as well because my Dad was a night worker - travelling up to London every evening to deliver the Royal Mail telegrams.  Throughout my childhood it was definitely a matter of "being seen and NOT heard".

One day, whilst looking for something in a cupboard, I came across an old photo album.  Tattered and worn it showed its age but it called out to me - "turn my pages and travel to a land far away".  I carefully carried it to the kitchen table, opened it up and was mesmerised by the old photographs.

This is when I first learned that my Dad had once been in the army in India.  In the late 1920s my Mum, Phyllis, was employed as a Nanny and one summer the family she was working for took a holiday in Calshot, Hampshire.  It was on the train travelling back to London that she met a young soldier by the name of Stan.  Timing was far from great because he was about to leave England for a tour of duty in India.  But they kept in touch and every few months he would send his sweetheart photographs from that foreign land.  She carefully mounted them in the album.

When Stan returned to England they wanted to marry but Phyll's parents were very much against the match.  Phyll was only 20 years of age and they thought that she could do very much better for herself than marrying a soldier.  The couple waited until Phyll reached that magical age of 21 and then they married at Marylebone Registry Office.

For the first few years of their marriage they rented a couple of rooms in Peckham.  But this was the 1930s and there was a building boom in the suburbs of London.  Stan put a deposit on a "two up, two down" semi-detached in Orpington.  It was a tiny, tiny house but paying the mortgage was very much better than paying rent to landlords.  Later in life they would actually own the property.  Having settled into their new home Phyll fell pregnant and a daughter was born.  Again the timing was far from great because this was just a few weeks before Stan was called up to serve in the Second World War.  Stan regularly sent money home so that the mortgage could be paid.  But everything was so expensive during those years.  Phyll had a young daughter to look after and she had no experience with paying bills.  She fell behind with the mortgage payments.

When the war ended and Stan returned he was furious to find that he was in debt.  He had sent payments home - why had the mortgage not been paid?!  Things were never the same after that.  To make matters worse the little girl who had been born before the war hardly knew her father - who was this strange man who had suddenly appeared and was demanding her mother's attention.  And then came another baby - yes, I came into the world as part of the post-war baby boom.  

Finding that old photo album as a child ending up defining my life.  If ever I wanted to escape from reality I would turn its pages and get lost in the pictures.  When visiting my aunt I discovered that she had "family" photo albums - the albums belonging to my Mum's parents and grand-parents.  Throughout my life, whenever visiting Auntie and being asked what I would like to do the answer was always "Can we look at the photo albums, please"?  

When Phyll died at the very young age of 56 Stan had a grand clear out.  During one visit after my Mum's death I enquired about the soldier's photograph album.  I could not believe it when Dad told me that he had thrown it away.  He said that it was something which meant nothing to anyone else so he had chucked it in the dustbin.  I was devastated.

Is it any wonder that I now collect old photographs!!!! 

When time permits I shall post more stories from my albums.