John and Ann Minchin: Earliest Photos

John and Ann Minchin. These are wonderful images of John Minchin and his wife Ann, the grandparents of Eileen, Peggy, Nancy and Thelma. They come thanks to Simon Bartram – a great-grandson of John and Ann, through his grandmother Florence (1894-1987). Florence was the youngest of John and Ann’s children, and a sister of Bill Minchin. The photos were passed down through Simon’s parents.

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Thelma and Reg Clark

  Thelma and Reg Clark: Another Country. From the moment Thelma Minchin stepped off the train onto the station platform, she must have felt she had entered a foreign country. Urban not rural, industrial not agrarian, loud not genteel, bomb-sites not fields, malodorous with fish rather than scented with flowers and vegetables and harvest. Instead of golden Cotswold stone, there were rows and rows

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May Wood and Bill Minchin: Drama of the Early Years

How May Minchin Recovered from Childhood Tragedy. This is the oldest photograph the site has at present (August 2013) of May Minchin. It shows May Wood – who later married Bill Minchin – sitting on the knee of a woman, probably her Auntie Ada, and looking like a porcelain doll. May is one or two years old so it dates from 1893-94. Alongside her

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Susan Dale and John Waite: the Early Years

  Susan and John’s Early Years By the early 1950s, the house in Harrington Street had served Eileen and Ken Dale well. They’d bought it for £450 to get a foot on the property ladder. Their son John had been born on the kitchen floor. He and Susan had attended the local schools. But Ken and Eileen were aspirational and had never intended to

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The Minchin Sisters

LORD HELP THE SISTER! Although it could never be called unpopular, being a sister seemed to come more into fashion during the Fifties and Sixties. In Britain the harmonious Beverley Sisters were a ubiquitous presence on the new black and white television screens which were invading the living rooms. In America, their equivalent was a trio called the Andrews Sisters. Not to be left

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May and Bill’s Golden Wedding: ‘Half Ton of Best Coal’

1970: Four Generations Captured In Time. In 1920, it was just May and Bill. Fifty years later, they sit surrounded by 25 relatives – 17 of them direct descendents. If every picture tells a story, then this one depicts a family saga. It is their Golden Wedding: 7 o’clock in the evening of Friday 6 November 1970, in The Warren Tea Rooms, Bourton-on-the-Water. May

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Eileen & Ken: The War Years

Love in a Time of War By John Dale It was 1937 and Ken Dale had just arrived in the Cotswolds. He was 19 years old and, to him, it was a strange part of the country. He was one of thousands of men being deployed by a government in London which was growing fearful of Hitler’s Germany. Britain was in a race to

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The Lost World

The Secret Life of Wold Newton By John Dale My grandmother Alice Lambert was nearly ninety when she climbed onto her sideboard to brush down a cobweb. As she reached up, she lost her balance and fell. She was found in her home, Groom’s Cottage, Wold Newton, Lincolnshire, and taken to hospital. She had broken a hip. While lying in bed, she drifted into

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