Sepia Saturday – Pleasure Beach Prizes

by Dianne RJuly 7, 2012July 6, 2012

Apart from a couple of dogs, the nearest I can get to this weeks topic are these Blackpool rabbits. Here’s my maternal grandfather, Henry Coates, (back left) with three pals on an outing to Blackpool Pleasure Beach. My mother’s family are from Stoke-on-Trent, Staffordshire, and Blackpool was their nearest resort. “Wakes Week” was spent there when possible – this was a traditional summer break for the industrial towns of the midlands and north of England.

The stuffed rabbits must have been won at the Pleasure Beach or the pier – the ears are impressive! My grandfather was a miner, the coal face he worked at was below the village where he lived. The pit-head though was four miles away – so he had a four mile walk to the pit, down in the cage, and a four mile walk back along the tunnels before he could start work. A break in the bracing air of the Blackpool coast was probably very welcome.

Click for more Sepia Saturday posts from around the web

52 Weeks of Personal Genealogy and History – Grandparents’ House

by Dianne RJuly 31, 2011July 31, 2011

My maternal grandparents lived in a village called Goldenhill, in Stoke-on-Trent, Staffordshire. They originally lived in what my mother called “the little house” on Albert Street. Then in 1936 the Church Army built a road of new houses backing onto the churchyard.

There are several Church and civic dignitaries here, with (presumably) the new tenants standing behind them.

If you are searching in vain for a street in the village, many names were changed in the 1950s. My mother always referred to Elgood Lane as Church Lane, because that’s what she’d always known it as. You can see a list of the changes on the potteries.org website.