Lincolnshire

I bought this rather elderly and battered map of Lincolnshire (north east of England) for sentimental reasons.  I lived there for about five years when my father was working in Grimsby.  Well, someone has to.  I can't say I got to know Lincolnshire very well but the place names on the map are very familiar.

Nowadays a map would show the Humber bridge which opened in 1981 connecting Lincolnshire at Barton on Humber with Yorkshire at Hull.

In 1964 we spread our wings

The first card above was one bought by my father and unused. Although there is a scribbled 1964 on it, it must date from at least two or three years earlier because St Andrews church on Freeman Street had been demolished by 1962.

Here was the common ground for all of us - going to school in this town, Grimsby in Lincolnshire, during our teenage years as we were finding our feet as we strived for adulthood. Some of us had lived here from birth, others were just passing through. Now we we've scattered throughout the country.  In 1964 all these cards were sent to me by friends as we took our first steps taking summer holidays without parents.

Wendy and Rosie went to Rosslare, in Ireland.  The weather wasn't too good but they seemed to have fun recovering from hard work at school.

Jennifer and Susan went to Scotland, a "grand tour" of Largs, Arran, Inverary, Loch Lomond and Edinburgh.  The card itself has a story.  I found it as I moved a small desk that used to be my mother's.  It dropped out of a narrow slot which can't be seen unless the desk is on its side.  The card arrived for me while I was living at home and it must have fallen behind the drawer soon afterwards.  The desk has moved house at least six times and yet the card didn't fall out until last month.

Muriel and Esther went to Chichester.  Muriel has since returned to that area and teaches nearby.

My sister went on an exchange to France.  She went with strict instructions to write home frequently and, goody-two-shoes that she is, she did.  I think she bought all the cards at the beginning of the trip, probably even wrote them all at the same time, and then posted them every other day.

The card shows the cross channel ferry, the Lord Warden, the first drive-on, drive-off car ferry for British Railway's cross channel service.  She was launched in 1951.  In October 1964 she was repainted in the new colours for British rail: blue hull, red funnel.  At the end of 1979 she went to Jeddah in Saudi Arabia, but just a year later was sent to Pakistan for scrapping.

And I, what was I doing?  I was staying with my grandmother in Dublin, and apparently not sending any postcards home.

You can find some other flights of fancy at Sepia Saturday.

Maud Foster Windmill

This card is one from my father's collection and almost certainly dates from the 1960s.  It shows the Maud Foster Windmill, now one of Britain's finest working windmills.  It was built in 1819 but by 1948 mechanical problems had made the mill unworable.

In 1987, the mill was bought and extensive restoration has returned it to full working order.

In an effort to find out why it was called Maud Foster Windmill, I have found out that what I thought was a canal, is in fact a channel cut in 1568 in an effort to drain the Fens.  It is called the Maud Foster Drain.  I'm still no further in finding out who Maud Foster was in the first place.

The Boston Stump

The Boston Stump, or more properly St Botolph's Church of the Parish of Boston, is 700 years old, give or take a decade.  The building started in 1309 but it was 70 years later before it was finished.  One of the vicars in the 17th century, John Cotton, followed the Pilgrim Fathers to America and was responsible for founding a new Boston there.

This card, bought in the early 1960s and never used, gives a good idea of the height of the tower which can be seen for miles around.  And of course, the reverse is true - from the top of the tower, you can see for miles, they say 32 miles.   To check that out, I recommend that you visit The Daily Photo Gallery belonging to John of English Wilderness fame.

Lincoln Cathedral, England

Never posted.  It was probably bought when we lived nearby, in the early 60s.

Lincoln Cathedral was rebuilt twice.  It was first completed in 1092, but subsequently destroyed by fire, rebuilt and destroyed by an earthquake.  Between 1300 and 1549 it was the tallest buiding in the world, but the central spire collapsed and was not rebuilt.  It is the third largest cathedral in England (St Paul's and York Minster are larger) and in my view one of the most beautiful.

Another of its claims to fame is that it was used in the filming of the Da Vinci code, as was Winchester Cathedral.

Victoria Street, Grimsby, England

Victoria Street, Grimsby, dated 1960. Never posted.