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Category Archives: family history

Mum’s Birthday

My lovely Mum was born on Bonfire Night one hundred and nine years ago and, as a child, thought that everyone was celebrating her birthday with enormous fires and fireworks lighting up the sky. As I write, I can hear the fizz and whizzle, pop and slap of fireworks and the sky is lighting up sporadically. Mum would have loved it as she also loved storms and wild seas.
My photo to honour her today is of her in her element, teaching deaf children in Roskear Primary School, Camborne. I once went to watch her in the classroom and what a special memory that is.

My brother just sent a photo of the parkin he has made today to honour Mum’s birthday. We always had Mum’s parkin around the bonfire with our sparklers!

Parkin made by my brother in Atlanta, Georgia

5 Comments

Posted by mybeautfulthings on November 5, 2023 in baking, family history, photography, Postaday 2023, Uncategorized

Tags: Roskear Primary School

Embroidered Treasures

21 Jul

I’m doing more sorting and clearing and re-discovered these beautiful pyjamas. I can hardly believe these were in our dressing up box when I was growing up. I just loved them! They were brought home at some point by my Grandfather but sadly I don’t know where he had been or why. Perhaps my cousins will know….. The problem? What to do with them now? Who will love and appreciate them? Please click on any photo to see the detail and the caption.

Top 2

Top 1

Dressing gown

Dressing gown, detail

Pyjamas trousers

Hem detail

Dressing gown

Dressing gown, detail

4 Comments

Posted by mybeautfulthings on July 21, 2023 in antiques, embroidery, family history, photography, Postaday 2023, Uncategorized

Tags: dragons, willow trees

Fathers’ Day

18 Jun

Father’s Day started with cards and flowers and breakfast in the garden accompanied by birdsong, the wren being the star of the show.

Over the last few months an historian has been in touch as he puts together a history of the school in Doncaster, Oswin Avenue Secondary School, where my Dad was Headteacher for four years before returning to Cornwall. I have sent him the following photos of my lovely Dad. The first two are photos Dad sent home to Mum while he was away in WW11, with his writing on the back.
The strangest coincidence came to light in our conversation yesterday as we discussed the final draft for the exhibition which will be in Doncaster Museum in the autumn. It turns out that the house we lived in, in Rectory Gardens, was also the home of said historian for 15 years !.

At Aldershot Camp, Nova Scotia. Sept ’41

Clarewood, Durban, Natal, S. Africa Nov 1941

The photo Dad chose for the covers of his books with his best friend.

1 Comment

Posted by mybeautfulthings on June 18, 2023 in family history, History, nature, photography, Postaday 2023, Uncategorized

Tags: Doncaster Museum, Ossie through the Ages, Oswin Avenue Secondary Modern School for Boys, Rectory Gardens Doncaster

Visit, Lunch and Family History

12 Oct

My cousin and her husband, who live in Australia, have been with us today and what a catch up that was! We think we last met in person when I was 16 and W a little younger. We have kept in touch by email and through this blog. I had made Eccles cakes in her honour as I know how she loves them.

We went to Gylly Beach Cafe for lunch having driven around Castle Drive to see the fine view around the Carrick Roads across to St Mawes and into Falmouth Bay. I took a photo of the Specials board to share and the battery in my camera announced that it was “exhausted.” Hence no more photos of our day together…..

W brought me some treasures – some lovely photos of our shared Grandparents and a photocopy of a page of her father’s autobiography with references to my Mum, here known as Twm, the name her Father gave her that stayed as a nickname. It means Gift from God. The extract describes my Mum’s inventiveness and her delightful sense of mischief. I had never heard this tale from her!

Granny

Grandpa on the left

4 Comments

Posted by mybeautfulthings on October 12, 2022 in baking, Cornwall, environment, family, family history, friendship, Gyllyngvase, nature, photography, Postaday2022

Tags: Eccles cakes

National Elephant Appreciation Day

22 Sep

https://nationaldaycalendar.com/elephant-appreciation-day-september-22/

I have loved elephants for as long as I can remember and have a large collection of carved elephants. We’ve seen herds of beautiful live ones on our many visits to South Africa. I shared this love with my Dear Friend Angie who died last year just before her birthday, a day we also shared. I really miss her.

My tiniest elephant, carved into a glass cube

My biggest elephant, bought at an antiques fair many years ago. He is as tall as my knees.

My Elephant family, representing me and the lovely Mr S, our eldest daughter, our second daughter and our twins, a son and a daughter. The tiny one is the little person we never met but who will always be one of us.

And I wear the ring that Angie left me every day.

Hope, Positivity and Confirmation

09 Jan

We have several daffodil bulbs up and with buds!

Good advice from Gandhi.

My brother has written today to confirm the story I told you yesterday. How Sidney Poitier came to hear of Mum’s work, we don’t know except that she was known within the teaching world for her excellence in teaching deaf children. My brother thinks he had a deaf child himself and wanted to know from the best how to help her.

1 Comment

Posted by mybeautfulthings on January 9, 2022 in environment, family history, garden, nature, Photography, Postaday2022, quotations

Tags: Gandhi, Sidney Poitier

Special Discovery

03 Aug

For some time I’ve been thinking I need to clean up the frame of a sweet, hand coloured photo of me at three or four years old, in a smocked dress made by my Mum. It’s a favourite and last week I took the photo out of the frame.

Behind the photo of me, I found two more very special photos of my Mum and Dad in their twenties I am guessing. I had no idea they were there! Aren’t they just the most beautiful couple?

My Mum, Cicely H M Wiseman nee Richards

My Dad. David Wiseman

13 Comments

Posted by mybeautfulthings on August 3, 2021 in family, family history, Photography, Postaday2021, Uncategorized

Tags: hand-coloured photograph

Treasures Found while Sorting

27 Jul

First in my discoveries was a wonderful photo, caught up with some modern ones, of my Grandparents in 1919. Here is my Grandfather, the Reverend Richards, on his beloved motorbike and with my Mum on his lap and my very lovely Granny in the sidecar with my Uncle.

Next I found a little book which turned out to be the Manchester University Student Union Handbook the year my Dad was President of the Union..

I love his address to the students where his principles are clearly on show.

Lastly, for today, going through my sewing projects box, I found an unmade Clothkit for dungarees for a 2-4 year old. I never got around to making them but have a lovely young friend with a two year old. I asked her if she might like to make these for her little boy and she was delighted, saying she had grown up wearing Clothkit clothing herself. I am equally delighted to be helping her to carry on the family tradition.

I look forward to seeing A in his smiley lion dungarees……..

2 Comments

Posted by mybeautfulthings on July 27, 2021 in antiques, family, family history, Photography, Postaday2021, sewing

Tags: Cloth Kits, Manchester University, Manchester University Student Union Handbook, Union President

Singing, A Toothbrush and A Cartoon

21 Jun

In 2013 some of our choir walked from Lands End to St Just, inspired by the March of the Women, 100 years before, who walked from Land’s End to London demanding Votes for Women. Tonight, in the atrium of the Eco Park we sang March of the Women, conducted by our leader, Claire, using a toothbrush.

Ethel Smyth’s rousing March of the Women was composed in 1910 to words by Cicely Hamilton, with a tune adapted from a traditional Italian melody. Emmeline Pankhurst (1858–1928) introduced it as the official anthem of the Women’s Social and Political Union and it became associated with the suffrage movement more generally. Info from the British Library

In 1911 it was sung on Pall Mall in celebration of the release from prison of a number of activists. The following year, the conductor Thomas Beecham (1879–1961) apparently heard it sung in Holloway Prison, where Smyth and Pankhurst were imprisoned and it is said that Ethel Smyth conducted the imprisoned women singing at their windows, using her toothbrush as a baton. Some of you know that my Great Granny was a Suffragette imprisoned and force fed in Holloway. I like to think she may have known and sung this song.

Two of our lovely choir members with whom I sing in the tenor section. I have permission to use their photos in my blog post.

There was a rueful smile when I saw this cartoon.

Covid rules in England say choirs can only sing outdoors in groups of no more than 30, all socially distanced. Have you seen/heard any football matches recently? 🙂

4 Comments

Posted by mybeautfulthings on June 21, 2021 in community, family history, friendship, Humour, Photography, Postaday2021, singing, Suffragettes

Tags: 'March of the Women' by Ethel Smythe and C.Hamilton, Mount Pleasant Eco Park, Purple White and Green

My Mum, Gardening and Baking

04 Jun

It’s 28 years since my Mum died on this day and I still want to tell her stuff that excites me or that I need her wisdom on. It doesn’t go away.
Today I want to celebrate her life by recognising some of the gifts that came from her – my love of gardening and of cooking.
She would have been delighted with us having an allotment so here are a couple of the flowers from there today.

After she retired, she used to fill in forms that asked for her profession not as ‘Retired Teacher of the Deaf’ but as Head Gardener.
She was a brilliant cook too so here is a coffee cake I have made today for the cake stall at the Redruth Butter Market stall tomorrow.