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Market Harborough and environs

When I was a child, the fields just south of Caxton Street were a massive attraction.
This page shows somewhere else, and more detail about the 19th Century.
The fields, I scampered over, however, were often ridged just like those shown, and
were a mixture of crops and pasture: sheep and cattle, ponds and rabbits. On
the page of emails to me about MH I have mentioned newts we searched for in the local ponds.
I found a book about Beatrix Potter, by Leslie Linder (The Journal of Beatrix Potter, 1966,
Frederick Warne), and in it is a plate of these amphibians as they were, at least in the late 19thC.
Please click here for the image.

 
Geoff, Ray, (Ken can also be seen on this page) Dickins brothers, late 1930s

Above, Kenneth Arthur, Church Organist, with contemporary boom box. Seventies, I think.
Below, Peggy, early fifties: and Ray, probably when at Loughborough.
 

 
Paul, Lynn, '51; Lynn, Edith, '52. At right, Ernest Frederick, on a bench, somewhere on the Cathedral Tours, '73
Note the woodworking shed on the left-hand photograph, seen in many of the photographs taken in Granddad's back garden.

 
Donaghadee: soda and potato breads, worms in the tap water: Lynn's Sick Codfish, 1952. I was seasick, she wasn't.
Next: New KNGS uniform, hence photograph, with Gran Douglas, at the rear of our lower floor
half of a maisonette in Ingoldsby Road, Northfield, Birmingham, 1954. Then Peggy, with Paul and Lynn at
Westward Ho!, Devonshire coast, probably '53. 

The photograph above is of my parents in 1961, I believe, when they were living in Greenmeadow Road, reached
down a hollow road, a relic of rural times, that has now sadly disappeared following further development.
There were a couple of old ladies living in an old house reached off this lane, where one could purchase
flowering plants. On that lane I also remember talking to an older chap about the Munich air disaster
that befell Manchester United. Remember that crash? Duncan Edwards and all those other football heroes.

More of Kings Norton Grammar School: These thumbnails (click for the larger version)
is what I spent time searching for in a bookshop on New Street in Birmingham.
A prize in form 2 for English provided a few shillings for a book, signed by
W. H. Reynolds, Headmaster. Note the number of species mentioned.
It hardly bears thinking about the loss of flora in England's fair countryside
since 1955, does it? This is the second edition, 1944, 5th reprinting, 1954.

Birmingham: Two sporting photographs; one of the Kings Norton Grammar School Cross-country team,
ca 1958; the other of the 1962 Northfield Methodists Youth Club Football team, with,
 reading from left to right: M. Wates, Paul Brown, Ray Barton, Alan Cox, Keith Clifton
(goalie, all of 5ft 3in), Rob Jenkins, Albert White, Dave Bird, Melvyn Jones, Ian Hill, Dave
Staunton. Missing is Michael Kelly and another. I still have, in a drawer, a pair of socks
and a yellow sleeved and collared green jersey. Muddy, clay fields, heavy footballs with
tied up bladders, boots with leather soles and round tack ended studs. Were crossbars
higher then than now? Some of these guys were at KNGS with me, although perhaps not
in the same year. Dave Bird was an excellent player: in several teams each weekend, with
boundless energy and tenacity. Northfield Methodist Youth Club had a social evening,
where we all learned to rock and roll, whenever we had the chance. KNGS had a class
for sixth formers, an evening a week in the summer term, when we joined the Girls'
School in learning to dance the quickstep, waltz, foxtrot and all those old
dance steps of our parents. The Gay Gordons forsooth!

Lynn on Richard's Bonnie, 1964. Lynn and Richard on Triton, 1965, I think. Great helmets!!
Roads near to Rangemore Hall, nr Burton-upon-Trent, Staffs. My father had
his second teaching job there, of five in total: Edgbaston Royal School for
the Deaf, Birmingham; one job each in Sydney, Australia and Auckland,
New Zealand; the last at Jericho School for the Deaf, Vancouver.
He was a teacher all his working life. Lynn, too. But she hasn't finished, may go on for ever!

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