Category: History

My Long Lost Uncle

Florence and Maurice
Uncle Maurice and Aunt Florence at my mum and dad’s wedding, Sheffield. That’s Grandad Swift on the left, giving them the cold shoulder.

I never met my Uncle Maurice and Aunt Florence, pictured here at my mum and dad’s wedding, and my mum hardly knew them either because, following some family falling out, he left home when my mum was still a toddler. He and my grandad never spoke to each other and, as she grew up, my mum realised that she’d be in trouble if she ever contacted him.

“I don’t know how you put up with him,” said Maurice, on a rare occasion when he saw her walking home from school and pulled up in his car. My mum looked around nervously, hoping that no one would spot her speaking to her banished brother and relay the news back to her father.

Rivals

Telephone directory: Grandad’s firm, Swift & Goodinson, had some competition from Maurice Swift junior (in column 3). Copyright Ancestry.com

As I’ve explained previously, it didn’t help that my uncle, Maurice T Swift, set up a rival funeral directors business to his father’s and, as he had the same name, there was then confusion about which business was which.

The rivalry extends into the 1939 telephone directory with Maurice T’s listing dwarfed by a masthead banner from his father insisting that ’85, Headford Street’ is the ‘ONLY ADDRESS’ for Swift & Goodinson’s complete funeral furnishers.

1939 register
The 1939 survey, image from Find my Past.

The 1939 survey, the nearest we have to a wartime census, provides a valuable snapshot of my long lost uncle’s life.

He a ‘Coffin maker, own a/c’ and Florence, ‘Shroud maker’ are living at 54 Hereford Street, not far from The Moor in the centre of Sheffield.

The Crerars

They’ve got lodgers; a family of variety artists, the Crerars: Peter and Elizabeth Crerar, aged 52 and 42, and their children, James, 21, Peter, 19 and Katherine, 17, all listed as variety artists, and Alexander, aged 10, who is still at school.

In the 1939 survey James and Peter have taken jobs in the steel industry and Katherine is a glazing machinist.

I’ve been unable to find any reference to members of the family on the variety circuit.

A year in December, 1940, James has enlisted but, along with a fellow soldier, Samuel Reynolds, aged 27, he’s remanded in custody in Rochdale Magistrates Court, charged with ‘having had carnal knowledge of a girl aged 15 years’.

Peter also enlisted as a gunner with the Royal Artillery. On 8th October 1941 he is listed as a casualty in the ‘Middle East’.

James Herriot’s House

James Herriot's

A distant cousin of mine who lived in Thirsk told me that when she was a young child her guinea pig died. In tears she took it, in its cage, to Alf White – a.k.a. James Herriot – the local vet.

“Can you do anything for him?”

It didn’t work out like it does in the TV series:

“No sorry, even I can’t help him!”

Grape Lane, Whitby, has no connection that I know to James Herriot but another James, later Captain Cook, was apprenticed there in 1746.

The Old Gang

lead mine spoil heap
As usual, don’t rely on the colour, as I’ve colourised my original black and white 35mm shot in Photoshop.
Swaledale trip

One last snapshot from our 16 July 1965 third form trip to Swaledale. Sorting through the old gang (‘gangue’ = waste) near Hurst, Swaledale are my two school friends Derek Stefaniw examining a chunk of mineral – perhaps fluorite or galena? – alongside cool dude Paul Copley.

Swaledale trip
From this distant view, I can’t identify any of the teachers or pupils examining the lead mining waste heap.

The Covenanters

Covenanters cartoon

Happy birthday to Dave, who recently found himself at the sharp end of a charge by the Covenanters. Admittedly they were armed only with traditional muskets and pikes but still a formidable fighting force if they’re hurtling towards you.

Richmond Castle

arch
negative

On our Ossett Grammar School school trip in the summer of 1965 we visited Richmond Castle. This is the same film as the Reeth photographs that I posted yesterday and, as you can see (left), the negatives are equally badly scratched, spotted and, in places, solarised.

I think that this works well for the Norman arch (above) but as a change from the daguerreotype effect that I went for yesterday, I decided the clean up the remaining images using the spot healing brush in Photoshop.

I soon realised that using the mouse on my iMac was impractical so, after boosting the contrast in the desktop version of Photoshop, I transferred the photographs to the iPad.

wall of Richmond Castle
Photoshop for the iPad
The iPad version of Photoshop, using an Apple Pencil, Sketchboard Pro, a PenTips Magnetic Matte Screenprotector and a PenTips Drawing Glove.

Touching up the images using an Apple Pencil in the iPad version of Photoshop makes it so much easier.

I air-dropped the image back to the desktop version to colourise it, using the Photoshop Neural Filters.

Plaque to Robert Baden Powell, found of the Scouts movement.

Coal Staith

coal staith

Remains of an old coal staith, a loading bay for barges, on the west side of Balk Lane bridge over the Calder and Hebble Navigation It served the former Hartley Bank Colliery, which closed in the late 1960s.

coal staith

The curved parapet of the bridge was originally capped by gently curved coping stones to prevent the tow-ropes of horse-drawn barges getting snagged. At this bridge you could have turned around the barge – and filled it up at the coal staith – without disconnecting the tow-rope.

Further upstream to the west approaching Horbury Bridge the canal passes a cutting so on this stretch towed barges heading upstream and downstream must have had some way of passing each other.

Coal Staith, Hartley Bank

Original photo

From my 1964-65 negatives, this is one of the two coal staithes (loading bays) at Hartley Bank Colliery.

The original (left) was in such a poor state that I’ve coloured it to make it more readable.

The same scene today is more green and rural, so I’ve superimposed my original 50 mm 127 frame on a wide angle iPhone shot of the same view today, taken from the bridge at the bottom of the Balk.

Apologies to ‘Ghosts of Horbury’ on our Horbury and Sitlington History Group Facebook page. I now realise how difficult it is to match up the perspective!

Holme Moss to Temple Newsam

cheshire sign

One evening in 1964 or 65, we drove out to Holme Moss on the watershed of the Pennines, on the border of what was then the West Riding of Yorkshire with Cheshire.

127 photos

Apart from some disappointing contact prints, I’ve never been able to look at these badly developed photographs so I’m surprised to see that the sign ‘UNFENCED ROAD BEWARE ANIMALS’ is just about readable.

That’s my sister on the West Riding sign.

Temple Newsam

Temple Newsam

On another evening outing my dad drove us all to Temple Newsam, Leeds. This time that isn’t me on the plinth.

Temple Newsam

John Carr’s Birthplace

John Carr

Spotted at the Øl hygge café bar, High Street, Horbury, this morning: to celebrate his 300th birthday last month, John Carr makes a brief visit to his birthplace, the cottage at the left-hand end of this Grade II-listed former farm house, which dates from 1637.

John Carr display

After his extended stint as architect in residence at the Redbox Gallery, Queen Street, the John Carr roadshow was moving on to its next venue . . . at the other end of Horbury, in the Carnegie Free Library.

Kirkham Priory, 1964

Kirkham Priory

There were chapels at the north-east end of Kirkham Priory, separated by an ambulatory (an aisle) from the main altar on the far right on my photograph. This black and white 127 photograph, coloured in Photoshop, is from my one and only visit there in 1964.