letters home

Dads letters
Above is a picture of many of the letters dad sent home to his family from this country while in the army.

They reveal a little bit more about him but are otherwise fairly mundane.

He was always after cigarettes,he sometimes asked for money to pay mess bills, he didnt enjoy the training. He was passed for a commission and was an officer for a while ,He appears to have spent sometime in the Marines in Lympston then Plymouth! He wanted at some point to transfer to the Lancashire Fusiliers (or was he joking?)
The letters show a lot of affection for his family including Helen which surprised me.

There is also a letter from Oxford assuring Percy that dad's place at Balliol would be kept open for him and he would be welcome back after the war

Muriel Crosland dad's mum

Muriel was alaways a bit of a mystery to me.
All I knew what that she died while dad was away in Burma. I dont know how.
Her fisrt husband was a Redmayne and was in the army, and he had killed himself.
( mum thinks by jumping out of a window )Muriel then married Percy Crosland.
The only other thing mum knew about her was that she was large and that in an age when few women drove -she drove a sports car!

Dad always gave me the impression he wasn't very close to his mum and dad, but today I saw some letters he had written when he had joined the army .They date from 1940 and 1941.The letters I think are pretty affectionate.
Anyway following Helens death late last year Susan kindly   sent some photos to Ann who passed them onto me and here they are !
She is not that large (at this stage anyway!)
The other picture is the classic one Was it taken on her wedding day.Was the picture of Percy taken the same day?

Thanks to Dwee for adding this
Interesting, I have heard that Dad adored his mother, and was very angry and upset when she died/ (peritonitis on the kitchen table), Grandpa had insisted that they operate on her there, I think probably she wasnt keen to go into hospital either.Did you know also that she married a bigamist,Muriel was also a great animal lover, and a free spirit by all accounts. She was certainly regarded as quite a beauty in her youth.

Robert Nicoll at St Andrews University

Robert Nicoll trained in medicine at St Andrews university.
He obviously enjoyed student life!
The 1912-1913 edition of the student magazine carries a spoof obituary of him which includes a caricature/cartoon.
The mock obituary tells us little about him; except that he was in the Officer Training Corps, and had a fondness for the ladies! The rest is in jokes which are impenetrable to us nearly a 100 years later but I guess he was a popular student
Interestingly in the same magazine there is an advert for Thos Muir,Son and Patton Ltd,Family coal merchants
Bob got a blue for running at St Andrews so running is in our genes somewhere!
The top picture is of Robert Nicoll in 1926 long after he left St Andrews, but he is wearing his running blue outfit.My guess is that it is taken on the sands on a return visit to St Andrews but we will never know.
By this time Robert had served in the Great War in the RAMC ,then been demobbed and was working as a GP in Beith Ayrshire.

The are only 2 Robert Nicoll's

Chatting to mum today she told me about Robert Nicoll senior
We know that Edwina ,Victoria, and my, grandfather and mum's dad was Robert Nicoll but his father had the same name!
The photo above was taken in New York !
Our great grandfather as a young man had been offered a job there as an engineer and was inclined to take it but his girlfriend refused to go wanting to stay near her mother

Robert therefore came home and when Bella's (Isabella's) mum died leaving a small drapers shop in Dundee, Robert and his then wife Bella ran it for many years.In fact mum remembers visiting it as a girl.
The couple had many years of happy married life together and had a large family of whom Robert Nicoll was one as were Meg and May. Robert Nicoll senior was well over 95 when he died,I think on 11th April 1958. Bella predeceased Robert,dying I think aged 85 in 1950. That means that the photos of a young Robert and Bella would have been taken in roughly the 1880's!
Here is a picture of them in later life looking very contented.

Below is a picture of their grave in Dundee. Also mentioned on the grave is a Margaret Gilmour who is a great great grandmother and from whom mum got her middle names. The grave is in a large cemetery in Dundee.

Crosland and Pickstone aerial photo taken 1933

Description: Crosland and Pickstone Finishing works in foreground, Transparent Paper Mill top right, Yates Duxbury Paper Mill in centre on both sides of the road

Photo taken in 1933

Having worked at Crosland and Pickstone in the 1970's for a couple of years I dont know the names of these ladies from Crosland and Pickstone (does the middle one have ricketts?) but I do know where it was taken
It is the dispatch area and these ladies would have wrapped the cloth that had been dyed and then finished by the company and would have been sent back by transport to the customers who would have been other complanies mostly in the north of England.
The dispatch area was one of the few areas women worked in the comapny though in the 1970's they also worked in the laboratory testing the strength of the cloth for example

La Belle France!

Just back from France
As children we went there quite a lot with mum and dad; Often to the south
Here is a photo from Le Lavendou!

Picnic at Atcham by River Severn

This photo was taken at Atcham and both the bridges can be seen in the background
It is of Sheila Crosland and Edith Nicoll having a tranquil picnic (or perhaps just tea in a flask) and I am guessing but would date it at about 1960-61
Unlike say Grinshill (where we would often go to walk dogs) Atcham was somewhere we visited only occasionally for a picnic and very rarely to play in the river
Atcham is still a picturesque place today and is very near Attingham Hall but it is also much much busier!

Early family photos

Here are a couple of photos both taken at Beech House Wem.
One was probably Victorias christening which would have been at Wem Parish Church( by Rev Turner I presume)in 1958
The other was some other occasion when Victoria is slightly older and is a much more informal photo .
The photos are unusual because dad is wearing jackets in both photos
I very rarely remember him doing that apart from formal business meetings

Thomas Muir Son and Patton

Just been chatting to mum and she tells me that Edith Nicolls father whose surname was Watson took over a coal merchants business in Dundee the name of the coal merchants business was "Thomas Muir Son and Patton" After the takeover the original name of the firm was kept, but run firstly by Edith Watson's dad(our great grandfather) and then by her brother Tom
I googled the name and came up with this interesting picture of a model train truck(presumably based on a real one )with the firms name on it !
This then would be a model of a real train that once carried the coal for the Watson family firms coal merchant business
As you can see from whats below the firm was still going in the 1930's and is very close to the station which would be used for supplies of coal.This station has been closed for many years now

1930`s

Shops & Business Premises
in Monifieth High Street & Maule Street •

South Side:
School Janitor`s House.
Monifieth Public School.
Corner of Maule Street ? South Union Street.
Office of Thomas Muir Son & Paton. Coal Merchants.
South Union Street.
House.
Farquharson. Plumber.
Winton. Painter.
Railway Cottages.
Railway Goods Yard.
Railway Station.