Tag: History

Time passing

Four lots of house clearance from different branches of the families have produced folder after folder of random photographs. Many have been stuffed in our attic for years, and we are now reaching saturation. It seems so disrespectful not to go through them all, but it takes a really long time. And it is hard. I don’t share photos of living family – these people are long since dead – but the images are so evocative. Many are around a hundred years old – different times, different lives – and so many stories. It can be overwhelming. We are probably the last generation to have any idea who some of these people are (were). My children have a passing interest in social history – but seem to care very little about their ancestors! Perhaps that comes much later – I’m sure I felt the same.

The families are mixed up here – at least I can sort that much. The task is not helped, though, by well meaning people who left it too late….they have sometimes written their best guesses on the back of the photos – and got it wrong – at times by a whole generation…

A message for us here? I too have packets and packets of those yellow Kodak envelopes filled with (mostly) terrible holiday snaps from the 1980s…my solution for those? The nearest recycling bin, preferably without another glance.

Both Victorian, both still in service.

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The first one – my local in Brighton – is a rough workhorse of a box, scuffed and much painted over. The second is in Tunbridge Wells (sorry, ROYAL Tunbridge Wells) – very pretty design, beautifully maintained and, it has to be said, with just a whiff of tourist about it….

They are both listed – the unsophisticated one as curtilage, not in its own right. I know which one I prefer though!

LYON: Centre d’histoire de la résistance et de la déportation

We timed an airport pick-up around this museum collection – and it was well worth it. Some stunning posters for anyone interested in ‘Work, Family, Fatherland’ in Vichy France – or indeed just in the history of propaganda as a weapon of war.

Some sobering, some inspiring:

Angeli was a local administrator condemned at the Liberation for having co-operated too enthusiastically with the Nazi regime. Gerlier was Archbishop of Lyon at this period. He seems to have been fearless in speaking out against Laval’s plans to deport Jews to the death camps – and, in particular, he urged Catholic priests to take the children into hiding.

There is evidence that a number of primary school teachers also took great risks to conceal their pupils. I would like to think I could have done the same – but with 5 children of my own to protect I’m not so sure….

I am certainly grateful not to have been tested in this way.