Kicking your heels on a wall - Sepia Saturday

This week's prompt with a damaged picture

made me look for photographs that have been hidden away for years.

During WWII a young girl had her photo taken. This had ghostly stripes where light had crept in.

After the war was over our little girl appears again on another shot that we can date to:

Pat, Mary and Margaret - 1947

But the meaning of the pencil numbers remains a mystery. Which one is our little blond.

That's for you to work out

She remembers where the picture was taken in Broad Street, Stamford, Lincolnshire - opposite the Central Cinema (definitely not the one known locally as the 'Flea Pit.'

The wall, she says, belonged to this old building,

Browne's Hospital
(by Andy 2/11/2011 - CC BY-NC-ND-2.0)

The hospital was founded in in 1475 by wealthy wool merchant, William Browne, to provide a home and a house of prayer for 12 poor men and 2 poor women.

But there's no sign of the wall the girls were kicking their heels against in that shot or in one from a different angle.

Browne's Hospital
(By Richard Croft - ex geograph.org,uk - CC BY-SA 2.0)

The hospital or Bedehouse was richly endowed with property and agricultural land in the vicinity. A bedesman or beadesman, a name derived from the beads of the rosary, was the title given to the poor men, 

Some of the hospital's funds were appropriated by Act of Parliament in in 1871 for the foundation of Stamford High School (where our blond girl was to become a pupil, much later of course) and for the further endowment of Stamford School (where a Sepians was to be educated in the 1940s/1950s)

The blond girl always insisted that the wall in the photo existed and was part of Browne's Hospital.

Now I know it's dangerous to doubt the word of a lady of any age. Francis Firth's photograph of Stamford's Browne's Hospital came to my aid. Copyright does not let me reproduce it.

Please look at the photo displayed by the link. It's taken in 1922 and there on the left is the illusive wall topped by steel railings. In 1947 the railings were no longer there as their metal had been required for the war effort in 1940-1945.

Study Firth's photo a little more and you will see behind the railings a stone urn which matches that in the top right of the picture of the three girls kicking their heels against the wall.

The lady's case is proved. Perhaps this is just as well because she is my wife of 57 years. I couldn't possibly contradict her!

For more stories derived from 'damage' pictures check out Sepia-Saturday-278.