The 1920's and 30's in Linden Road.

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I do realise that Family photos are mainly of interest to family members, so I am hoping to add a few other snippets to go with them. This post is about my Mother’s side of the family. I don’t have as much detail on this ‘branch of the tree’ as I do on my Father’s side. Dad outlived our Mom by twelve years, and it was during this time, when he stayed here with me, that I managed to get a lot of the family details. On the other hand, my Mom died quite unexpectedly and we hadn’t really dug into the history behind all the old photos.

This first large picture shows at least three generations.  

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The Simkins Family

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Luckily, someone has written all the names on the back. Although, when I say names, not full names, just things like Uncle Bert and Aunty Ada. Finding out who is married to who, and to whom the children belong, will be a task for the future.

I have not done any research into ancestry yet. I did look online but found it all too complicated. I expect it is not that bad once you get going. (?)

The two centrally seated family members are of course my Great-grandfather and Great-grandmother. (striped cardigan)

Now standing behind Great-gran, is my Grandma, or Nan as she was always called. To her left is Grandpa, better known to us boys as Pop. Their two children are seated on the floor. My mother, is second in on the right and my Uncle Stan is second in on the left.

At the time of writing (2012), only one in that photo is still with us today.

Apart from Nan and Pop and of course Mom and Stan, I cannot ever remember meeting any of the others.

This next picture is slice off the one above to show the three generations.

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Top - Nan & Pop S.
Centre - Great Granny S.
Seated - Dorothy S.

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My mother sitting at the feet of Great-grandma with Nan and Pop standing behind.

If we could only arrange a ‘reunion’, what tales there would be.

At least I am writing a few thing down now for the next three generations to read up on.

My mother would have been just a teenager there I guess. I can’t accurately date that photo. (perhaps around 1927).

I have a few photos of Mom as a baby but I have left those remaining in the family album. However here is a very early one of Pop holding her up with her brother Stanley. Looks like the back garden in Linden Road. (1920?)

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Pop holding Stan & Doss (Dorothy)

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And a much better one that was obviously taken in a studio.

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Dorothy & Stanley Simkins

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There are dozens of ‘snaps’ taken in Linden Road, nearly always by Nan on the family ‘Box Brownie’ camera. I get the impression that she didn’t like being in photos; she doesn’t appear in many and I certainly never managed to take her photograph. Having said that however, there is somewhere in the family a bit of cine-film of her! (now on video I believe). It will be fun to track this down and finally digitise it as I have done with all these other negatives and prints.

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Stan & Mom

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These were taken right down at the

bottom of the garden, because I remember

that fence as the one backing onto the allotments.

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Proud Pop with Stan & Doss

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It is a shame that they only had a

'Box camera' in those days.

Had the quality been better I would have

loved to enlarge this next one of Mom in the deck-chair.

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Mom, Pop and Uncle Stan.

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And one of Nan at last.

Messing around on stilts with Stan.

She looks as if hers has sunken into

the soft earth.

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Stan and Nan (pictured at last)

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Simple pleasures in those days.

Just knocked up from bits of wood.

Years later Dad made us some,

and we would walk around for hours

 looking over peoples fences and walls.

I remember one day walking all the way down

the road and into the local park just to

try them out in the stream!

Ah! At last one of Nan,

caught off guard!

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Nan as she will always be remembered.

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All taken in the 1920's and 30's.

All would change in 1939.

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Making a Start

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Why a new blog?

And what am I going to write about here?

Well, since I have been sorting through the hundreds of old prints and negatives ‘inherited’ from my parents and grandparents, I have found that there are many  that don’t fall into the category - ‘my early days of childhood’, but are still interesting, or maybe interesting to future generations. 

You see, I have no idea what my great grandparents thought, what they did and enjoyed. All I have are old faded, and some not so faded, photographs of my very smartly dressed Uncles. I also have sepia, and black & white pictures of my Aunts, ‘suffering in their stays’, as Dylan Thomas wrote in Under Milkwood. 

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"Suffered in her stays."

I wonder what hobbies they had, what did they do in their leisure time, what books did they read and what music did they enjoy, or even play? 

I wonder if in fifty or sixty years time, the children of my nieces and nephews will be at all curious of their ancestors, as I am of mine?

I am trying to do a write-up of my childhood days, on my blog called ‘Early Days in Bournville‘, but where do I document all these other bits and pieces which do not really fit into my ‘childhood’.

Here, is the answer. 

A miscellany of family events and photos, from all the 'other' days.

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Aunty Gladys - 1905

Of course photographs can be looked at easily, but not so for negatives. 

From over a  hundred years ago until quite recently, 

all photography involved taking 

‘negative’ images, and then printing ‘positive’ pictures. Many of the ‘positive’ photos were lovingly given away to family, friends and relations, and all that was kept, were the little strips of negatives in their faded paper envelopes.

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It is these long neglected negatives that I have been slowly sorting, viewing and printing. Years ago one would need a ’darkroom’ and maybe an enlarger to get prints from these, but luckily, technology has come to the rescue and a scanner/computer gives us the positive image without the need for chemicals.

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2 ¼” square format negatives

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My Grandfather was a chemist by profession. 

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Grandpa David

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He left home in Swansea and came up to study chemistry at a college in Bromsgrove, Worcestershire. 

It was actually there that he met my Grandmother, the caretakers daughter. 

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Grandma Alice.

They were married and moved to live in Bournville where my Granddad open a Chemists shop ‘down the road’ in Stirchley. 

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The Stirchley shop - Grandpa (left) and his assistant.

In those day, chemists not only dispensed medicines but they also developed camera films and printed off the positive photographs. 

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A replica Chemists - Milton Keynes Museum

They were mainly ‘contact prints’ where the negative, is placed in contact with the photographic paper. This produced a print the same size as the negative used in the camera. In those days nearly all holiday snaps were 3” x 2” or thereabouts. 

Usually taken on a ‘box camera’ with a 120 film.

Enlargements cost more money and were reserved for special occasions like weddings.   

Grandad, used to use a plate camera in those Edwardian times, and I still have one of his. It’s looking very ‘tired’ and needs a bit of repair to the bellows. I know how to make bellows, but where can I get the correct material?

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Grandpa's 'half-plate' camera.

The next cameras I remember seeing used a slightly larger film than the old 'box' cameras. It took ‘postcard’ size photos. My Aunt, (grandads daughter) had one like this, and we also still have it ‘in the family’ so to speak. My Dad saved most of these, 

and I think my sister now has a huge cardboard box full of old cameras somewhere. (?)

But without these, I would now have no photographs, or perhaps, a very few, taken by other people.

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Grandpa, as I remember him at Maryvale Rd.

Thanks to Granddad, taking up chemistry, and then my father following on with an interest in photography, I have these boxes and boxes of negatives and photos. 

Around  1956 my Father joined the Camera club at Cadburys and of course he couldn’t turn up with a Kodak ‘Brownie’, so he must have saved up hard and splashed out on a nice new German Zeiss camera. 

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The Zeiss Ikon camera. 

It was a 2 ¼” square format and took excellent pictures. When I was sixteen (1958) he bought an even better one, a Minolta twin lens reflex and I was given the old Zeiss. I used that for years and so I too, have boxes and albums full of  hundreds of prints not to mention all the slides and negatives. 

I last used this camera in Austria in 1983.

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Ziller valley - taken from the last carriage.
Going backwards!

This blog is of course, more of a ‘family-history-photographic-album’,

putting names, places and if I have them, dates to these old prints.

It is of course an ‘open album’, for anyone to view, and you are all most welcome.

I just hope the younger family members take an interest too.

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