Number 64: the end of an era. Stories and finds

Among the most touching finds in our parents' house after Mum died in April was stuff from the First World War in a tin box from our paternal grandparents' house. One of our antecedents was sent to Northern Ireland after he joined up. Sadly, the amount of anti-Catholic prejudice he experienced from his fellow soldiers was enough to make him desert. Since deserters were shot if discovered, he joined up again under a different name. He was killed in action in France in, we think, November 1914. Such a waste.  In the box were his identity tag (commonly called a "dog tag"), some letters to his mother, and the notification of his death from the war office to his family. That and his tags came in the stiff cardboard roll you can see to the left of the tin in the picture below.

My sister and my eldest daughter are going to scan these and other items of ancestral history and make the information available to us all online.

Other military artefacts, including Dad's post-WW2 army lieutenant's jacket and Sam Browne belt – he had to do two years' national service when he left school even though the war was over – will be made use of by Smudge's partner at exhibitions and talks.










Also found among items that old were these two shaving stick tins that were made into money boxes for old copper coins. They are just the right diameter for the pennies and halfpennies (for anyone in the younger generations reading this that's pronounced 'haypnies') to sit horizontally inside. My younger grandson has started to collect coins so these have gone to him. Jed (eldest brother) has got the large stamp collection – several boxes of a size large enough to store LPs: "What's an LP?" said Toadlet. Yes, well, end of an era, though I hear "vinyl" is making a comeback.



While I was clearing out the boiler room, Rye did the box room. We called it the box room eventually but it was big enough to fit a bed and a desk as well as its built-in wardrobe and I think it had been the bedroom of several of we five over the years. That carpet was there when we moved in in 1967, not the only thing we wore out!

Box room cleared of a large number of boxes,
many of them empty

 ⬅️ My view from the wash-house/boiler room while I cleared it. Some of what was cleared, most of it destined for the skip that Teedee arranged ⬇️

stuff to chuck leant against the back garage doors

 ⬅️ Boiler room after. And, yes, those are chimney sweeping brushes stuffed into holes in the wall through to the garage.           🤔