Nice People Thread No. 15, a Cyber Summer

Pyxis

What's the duty-free like?





Swee!



Just to think......... Heathrow was probably like that once! I know Gatwick was! :rotfl:



Edit....or am I thinking of Croydon airfield?

vivatifosi

Some of my family come from North Norfolk, but further west than where you are currently GDB... more the bit between Wells Next the Sea to the east and Hunstanton to the west.

My dad is going to do one of those DNA tests soon. It will be interesting to see if he has any Scandinavian blood. A lot of his family were mariners, and many intermarried with the Scandinavian seafarers.

It's a lovely area, but a bit too flat for me to want to live there. I am somewhat partial to hills.

PasturesNew

Nailed it! And with a photo of the girl's mother/aunts!

I was right, Sherbourne School.

I had one name "Jean Bennett" who had written in December 1933 and said she was 12.

In 1921 there was a Jean P Bennett born, MMN Cavanagh-Mainwaring - THAT is posh enough for me to be a contender. Looked up the marriage. Found it.

Googled. Found a website writing about this family - and the mother was a cousin of the website's author's grandmother (or something).

Anyway .... I was on the trail of this Jean to see if she was a writer in the book and on that website is a page.
http://ayfamilyhistory.blogspot.co.uk/2014/04/n-is-for-naval-husbands.html
Photo of posh girls in posh dresses - the one they call Kiddie is Jean's mother.

Jean was 1921-2009.

Then, down in the comments is a comment from another distant relative, it said "Jean Patricia Bennett (always known as Jean). They all went to Sherborne School for girls."

Bit of a win!

Obviously none of it is "proof", but it's strong circumstantial evidence that the Jean in the book is the same Jean .... and the book was written by girls at Sherborne.

PasturesNew

I have enough of them now.... so what to do?

Well, I just randomly decided, while strolling round the garden, that the best thing to do is to transcribe the entire book - page by page. I'll then photograph each page, providing access to a facsimile of the original to people of idle curiosity who find them in their tree.

That way it makes an old document available to all for free.... and if anybody should be researching their family history and wish to "own" it, then they can make me an offer, but I don't expect the book to ever be requested....

But that is the best way to get the information out there and to share it, for free, to those who seek these things.

There's about 60 pages in total.

Pyxis

You could also contact Sherborne School for Girls and see if they can give you more info from their archives?

They may even have a reference as to why the book was compiled.

PasturesNew

Pyxis wrote: »

You could also contact Sherborne School for Girls and see if they can give you more info from their archives?

They may even have a reference as to why the book was compiled.

Yeah, I looked at their website last night.

I believe the girls were boarders - and probably all shared the same room. So the book might've been whoever also lived there to "keep an eye on them"...

And I suspect that person then went off, grew old and died ... and their child kept the book ... or their grandchild, who then died and the house was cleared.

PasturesNew

I think one of the other authors was sister to a commander of the SAS and Brigadier ....

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mike_Wingate_Gray

PasturesNew

Went out and picked up a simple chinese meal - s/s chicken balls and plain chow mein ... and made my own white rice before I went. Got enough leftover for tomorrow too, of course.

They give you a free bag of prawn crackers too! Not a buyer of those, but happy to scoff them

Pyxis

How's the building site thing? Have they finished any of the houses yet?

PasturesNew

Pyxis wrote: »

How's the building site thing? Have they finished any of the houses yet?

I think they're going round building all the walls to the same height - so going round in a big circle round two rows of 4-terraced... so not seen much going on at this end, where they're up to first floor ceiling height. On Friday though the man on the scaffold was making a hell of a din with regular use of a circular saw cutting into bricks and creating clouds of dust.

I'd have expected them to have built one set of terraces, then moved onto the 2nd row, leaving the first row available for others.

But I did notice over a week ago that first fix electricals has all gone on...

So ... on balance.... they're probably a lot closer to being finished than I could possibly imagine

2.5 months to them handing over the site.