Feeding An Interest

It has been a great source of pleasure to me this week that Sean seems to have developed a great interest for local history and genealogy, particularly as he doesn't really get interested in anything for very long. His history homework this week was to produce a poster about Acocks Green which should encourage people to come and visit. He did a good job! In the course of his research on the net, he came across some books on the local area, and because I'm a good Mummy I bought him one on Ebay, and it arrived yesterday. The book comprises vintage postcards of the Acocks Green area, and we were delighted to find a postcard of our road dating from 1907, where you can see our house (well, you can see our garden wall and the upstairs window at any rate). It really seems to have sparked his interest, and as for me, I'm pleased to see that my assumptions about our garden wall being the original one were correct.

Sean had worked out for himself that the original shops on one side of Warwick Road had been knocked down and rebuilt when they widened the road, and after we popped to Sainsburys to get some lunch today I pointed out the key features of the 'new' shops that identified them as 1960s/1970s architecture while we sat in traffic on the way home. You just can't beat the beauty of Victorian architecture though!

Tonight Sean surprised me by asking if we could watch 'Who Do You Think You Are', which if you haven't seen it follows celebrities around while they trace their ancestry. If I can keep him interested in things like that, I'll be happy ... after all, we all know that scrapping and genealogy go together.

On the history front, I discovered that there used to be Mission Hall on our road in 1905 - I want to look further into that to see exactly where ... I think probably down the other end of the road rather than at this end. I'd love to know exactly why this road was built and who lived here ...


Speaking of who lived where, I nearly bought this postcard of Upper Walthamstow Road the other day. Upper Walthamstow Road is the road in London that I lived in from the age of 7 until I left home in 1990. I knew there was only an hour or so left on the auction, but I got so engrossed in searching on Ancestry.co.uk that I forgot to bid, and I missed it. It didn't sell though, so hopefully I might still be able to get it. The turning that you can see on the right hand side of the picture is Bisterne Avenue, and we lived on the left hand side at number 90, which is in the bit of the road where it dips down, so you can't really see it on here. I think if I really enlarged the picture I might be able to see our house through the trees. I really miss that house.

Sean said to me tonight that he wishes he could go back in time to see how things used to be ... YES!!!!! That's EXACTLY how I feel! I want to be able to go back so that I can have more of my family history than just names and dates, and so that I can get the answers that I crave.

Anyway, it's three am and I'm supposed to be doing all the artwork so that Col can make loads of stamps in the morning ...