Tuesday 26 October 2021

Group Photos

It was the mention of St Audrey's Day last week that reminded me of my stay in a private girls boarding school of that name many years ago.
 
I searched out the photo, from the summer holidays of 1971. This is a photo of everyone who stayed at St Audrie's school on a Baptist Chapel Fellowship of Youth House Party. The school was in West Quantoxhead in Somerset. People came from all parts of the country.
We had two weeks of visits out around the area and a chapel service each evening, quizzes and walks . It was a good fun. I wonder where everyone is now.
 
That got me thinking of other group photos from the past.............
 
This one below is from about 1976 . It's me and lots of other Cub Scout Leaders on a weekend training course somewhere near Norwich. I had to do the course in Norfolk because Suffolk Scouts weren't running that course that year and I needed to do it before finishing the third and final part of training.

 
Slightly more recently, the group photo below is of a school reunion I helped to organise in 1988. These are some of the people who started at Stowmarket Grammar School in 1966. Plus some of the staff from the time. It was difficult to track down everyone (this was before the internet got going) - so many had gone to university and headed off to work abroad. Quite a few had been living at RAF Wattisham where their fathers worked - no way of finding them 20 years later.Some people we found refused to come to the reunion because they'd hated school! I found that really sad.  There were about 80 people in our year from all parts of East Suffolk except Ipswich - where they had their own Grammar Schools.

I'm third from the left sitting at the front. 3 of us got together to organise the reunion which we held at the school. It was such a surreal evening. The school became a comprehensive in 1971 and has just been knocked down with a new school built in much the same place. Sadly I know at least two of these in the photo the same age as me passed away within the last two years.
 
 Below is  group photo from about 1990. It's Stowmarket District Cub-Scout Camp held at Old Buckenham Hall (OBH), a boarding Prep School in Brettenham near Stowmarket. Our Son was a cub at the time and the girls sitting down the front are our girls.....back then girls couldn't join a Cub Scout Group - unlike now - (and Youngest Daughter is only about 3 years old )but we always took them with us to everything except the weekly pack meetings. I'm standing at the back but Colin isn't in the photo - we could never think why and actually now I look closely I'm not sure our son is in the photo either!
 
The cubs and the leaders are from packs in Haughley, Bacton, 1st and 3rd Stowmarket, Combs, Mendlesham and Needham Market. I think this was the last Cub Camp held here as the Headmaster - a lovely man called Don Sewell retired and the new head didn't want anything to do with Scouting. We also held Cub Scout District Football Tournaments here. I've got a photo of "my"cubs being awarded the trophy one year.
 

Happy memories
 
The new  TV series based on Ann Cleeves Book The Long Call started promisingly last night. From what I can remember it's really close to the story. For some reason ITV are showing all four parts of the story at 9pm this week. I wondered if they planned it to clash with Shetland at 9pm on BBC on Wednesday. Although with catch-up on all channels there doesn't seem any point.
 
Back Tomorrow
Sue


26 comments:

  1. When you mentioned St. Audrey's Day last week I thought that's interesting, we have various St. Audries places down here (slightly different spelling). So you stayed at St. Audries (no apostrophe down here anymore) school in West Quantoxhead - that's just down the road from us! The place I mean, not the school, I don't think that exists anymore, I think it might be a wedding venue now. Small world! St. Audries Bay is a nice place to walk, near our favourite Dunster beach. There's a big caravan site in the Bay, we looked at buying a van there but it was too expensive.

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    1. Yes, a wedding venue now. I always used to look down the drive way as we passed on our way to the camp site at Watchet.

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  2. I've got a photo of a Baptist Summer School in Sussex from 1971 looking almost identical (it was the older ladies perms, and the teenagers jeans and the boys shaggy hair...) That was before package holidays - but parents let us go off for two weeks of "freedom". But they were brilliant times, I'm still in touch with people from those days

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    1. I thought you'd probably been on a Baptist House Party holiday too. It was a good two weeks. The girl sitting far left was also the daughter of a minister. I think her surname was Stone and Pastor Stone was a Baptist minister somewhere in Suffolk.

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  3. Hubby's youngest son got married in the manor house in the estate 12 years ago, it's beautiful there. The school shut in 2008, but the estate is still lovely. It's close to the village where I grew up in Somerset.

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  4. Don't you just love the fashions from the 1980s? I had a turquoise suit just like the lady third from the right in the front row! (I made it myself!) I suspect I even wore it with white tights and white shoes! Fun times!

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    1. I was the odd one out at the re-union as I went in trousers, with a red top and a black jacket with shiny lapels. All the other women were in dresses or suits.
      I've never possessed a suit in my life!! ( I did have some red tights once! but never white)

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  5. So many memories you brought back Sue, I have several photos of days when we did the Cubs etc. We are so lucky to have these photos , when I see photos now they are from a phone so you don't have something that you can keep, Your photos will be lovely to show your GC.
    Hazel ๐ŸŒˆ๐ŸŒˆ

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    1. I've got a whole album full of Scouting pictures that I used to show the new cubs when they joined so they could see some of the things we did.

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  6. I also went on similar 'camps' run by one of the Christian youth groups, I can't remember which. Mine was an old house by Bala Lake, where the girls stayed in the house and the boys in cabins outside. Lake based activities, day trips on a coach, guitars in the evenings. I think I went for three years, but they were just a week at a time. Absolutely loved it!

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    1. I think I probably spent too much time chatting up boys!

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  7. All those faces. All those young hopes and dreams. Whatever became of them all. Little lad at the front in the second picture doesn't look too impressed.

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    1. I expect his parents were leading the training or maybe doing the cooking and he'd got dragged along whether he liked it or not!

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  8. I have similar memories of going to a girl's private boarding school in Sidmouth - must have been in the later 60's I think and it was my first time away from home for such a long time. We met girls from all over the country and had a great fortnight exploring Sidmouth and beyond. I wonder if any of your readers went on the same holiday and do schools still arrange these kinds of holidays now I wonder?

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    1. I doubt they have these sort of holidays now there aren't many church youth groups for older children now.

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  9. Such great treasures to have those pictures. Wonderful memories to go with them. We have Acorn TV and Brit Box I can not wait for Shetland to come I loved that show. and of course I love Vera so hoping to love her new one also.
    Cathy

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    1. I wish I could remember more about those times - seems a long time ago now

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  10. Your photos must carry treasured memories of many good times as well as lots of work organizing and leading scouting events. Scouting was very popular in the US too. My son was a scout and his friend went on to be an Eagle scout. Den meetings took place at various homes and I remember hosting when my turn came around. Good times for sure.

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    1. Scouting still keeps going although always a shortage of leaders

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  11. Apart from one Grammar School photo I have never featured on a Group Photo - I must have missed out somewhere.

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    1. What a shame, although I'm surprised I have so many and there are two VERY long whole-school Grammar school photos rolled up in a box too

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  12. Lovely to have!
    I belong to a local FB group where such photos get shared, but I never seem to appear, yet I have all the individual year photos. Maybe I fell off the back?

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  13. What a fun post looking back on many past group activities! I have a few group photos myself although most of them are of my boys in school or scouts.

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  14. What wonderful memories those group photo's invoke. I did not attend my high school reunion as I had only attended that school for 1 year and never did get an invite to the one I would have attended.

    God bless.

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  15. Precious memories :)
    Time passes so quickly sometimes.
    Mxx

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  16. I have a number of the annual class photos from my teaching life. All those little children are now adults and out in the world - I wonder how they are doing now.
    xx

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