Peter Crosland as a young man

Susan my cousin very kindly sent me a whole load of documents and photos yesterday
These documnets fill in a great deal about the Crosland family
In time I will many of them on the blog here.
I will start though with 2 photos of Peter Crosland
One when he was possibly in the army or more probably in the school CCF -(Its hard to be usre but if it is the army then it was while he was in training beofre going to South Africa,India and then Burma
The other photo is a fabulous one of the young man about town taken I gues in the late 1930's but could have been take in the 1960's !!

Diary written as war breaks out

Mum has a small diary of a holiday she took with her family in 1939 .What is fascinating about the diary is that it is written at a time when war seemd to be looming .At the top of most pages is a phrase like "war more likely" or" war seems less likely today"

The diary also records a trip the family took to a TB sanatorium near Talgarth where John Watson was the chief medic.Mum recalls sharing a room with her sister Gladys and they were there when the war actually broke out on Septemeber 3rd
Mum recalls seeing so many people in uniform and finding it impossible to get a hotel room on their travels in Shrewsbury and having to get one on the outskirts of Chester instead
The diary cover just a few short but very significant weeks in mums and her familes lives

wedding day photo

I spent the afternoon with mum yesterday.
After lunch we spent an hour or two chatting through the past and looking through old photos of her family and even writing down the names of the people while they are still remembered.Mum is holding a photo of Robert Nicoll and Edith Watson's wedding. Apologies for the quality of the photo I just snapped it with my phone camera. The wedding took place at St Fillans church Newport on Tay, Scotland.

Dot and Dieter

Aunt Dot has died
I had seen her only very rarely in recent years but I have very happy memories of Aunt Dot and Uncle Dieter from my childhood
I remember spending New Year with them in London and remember their visits to Beech House,Wem at Christmas time .
I can remember being up very early one Christmas Day (probably about 5 am!) looking longingly at the presents round the Christmas tree and being caught by Dieter and ordered back to bed!
They were both generous people with a great sense of humour and generally fun to be with, which is I guess what Aunts and Uncles are for!
I will miss them


the opicture above was taken ,I think at Victoria and Guy's wedding

Nicoll family photo

Mum discovered a picture of her dad Robert (Jnr) as a 4 year old  with his mum and dad  Robert & Bella and sisters Meg & May. Mum dates the picture at about 1894

The writing on the back is written by our Granny I think and says look at this when you want a laugh!

Dads funeral

It is nearly 5 years since dad died within minutes of arriving at the hospice in Shrewsbury.

 On 26th July he was cremated and his ashes scattered on the River Wye .The order of service featured a self portrait of dad in his studio

wedding photos

Photos of the wedding of mum and dad

120Yards hurdle medal

When I was a child there used to be quite a few of these around the house..This is the only one I have, dated in 1936 .It is a medal dad won at Gresham's school for the 120 yd hurdles when he came second.It is in its original box

Dad,s favourite sport was Rugby Union followed by cricket but I remember  he also enjoyed watching athletics especially running 

Crosland bible

I have never seen a Crosland family bible but this is the nearest thing too it, I suppose.
Helen sent it to me via dad about 15 years ago. Her Dad, Percy Crosland had been given it as a child at Oakes Baptist Church Sunday School ,Lindley, Huddersfield on Feb 25th 1900.It was then passed onto Helen on 16th Jan 1930.
Our great grandfather had attended Oakes Baptist chapel for a number of years and had obviously sent his sons Percy and Herbert to Sunday School

Graduation Day

Dad first went upto Oxford at in 1939 but left at the end of the summer term 1940 in order ro join the army.having served in various places including Burma he rejoined Balliol College Oxford in I think 1946 and graduated in 1949
Mum remembers it being a very hot day and she sat in the balcony to watch dad graduate BA in Modern Greats -Politics Philosophy and Economics- with a 2-1.She wasnt keen but mum felt she had to wear a hat anyway. Note dads mortar board.

It must have felt a great achievment to finish something he had started 9 years earlier and which had been interupted by war.

Below are some recent memories from Eric Lubbock one of dads great friends at Balliol who became a Liberal MP and then a member of the House of Lords, as Lord Avebury

Many thanks for sending me the extracts from your father's book, which brought back memories. His nickname was Master, mine was Dean, Pat Scally's was Warden, and Dave Robinsin had a similar title which I can't remember. Your mother was called 'Aunt' for reasons I also can't recall. I wonder if she could remind us?

The bright yellow flying jacket I bought in a second hand shop came in very useful in the bitterly cold winter of 1947.It was fill length, ankles to shoulders, with zips to get inside it.

I remember Tommy Balogh, mentioned by your father as being very scathing to students who didn't come up to his standards. There was a story that when a bad student came to him for a tutorial, finding nobody in the room, he started reading his essay, only to be stopped after a few sentences by a voice from the cupboard: "Go away you horrible little man, I never want to see you again". So your father was let off quite lightly. I also remember well and with respect Cyril, the head porter, and Curly Dryden, the bald landlord of The George in the village of Dorchester, visited in your father's MG on weekends.

It was shaming to read how anti-gay we were in those days, but as your father does say, we weren't racists. Seretse Khama, subsequently the first President of Botswana after independence, was a good friend of mine, and he invited me to their independence celebrations in the late 60's.

I also think now that it was a pity we spent so much time drinking. I've been teetotal since 1973, and also gave up cigarettes in 1976, and coffee, cake, biscuits and sugar in 1977, partly because I became a Buddhist. Maybe I learned a few things from life, some of them long after leaving Balliol.

The Begum Aga Khan

We have some rich relatives
Gran Nicolls brother Ed went to India in the time of the Raj and became in mums words very grand and very rich.
Grans husband Bob did not like him much, mainly because he stayed in India in the first world war instead of coming home to fight.
His Grandaughter is Sally Croker Poole.Mum remembers as a 14 year old visiting her at her parents home in Surrey. Sally at that stage was crawling around the floor as a baby.
Sally grew up, became a model, married a member of the Scottish gentry ,divorced him and then converted to Islam, and married the Aga Khan ,divorcing following the birth of 3 children
A couple of pictures of her in her earlier life and then more recently.
She is mums first cousin once removed we think.

More info here;

Early life
Princess Salimah Aga Khan was born on 28 January 1940 at New Delhi, India, as Sarah Frances Croker-Poole. She is the daughter of Lt.-Col. Arthur Edward Croker-Poole. She married, firstly, Lord James Charles Crichton-Stuart, son of Sir John Crichton-Stuart, 5th Marquess of the County of Bute and Lady Eileen Beatrice Forbes, on 25 June 1959. She and Lord James Charles Crichton-Stuart were divorced in 1968. She married, secondly, Prince Karim Aga Khan IV, son of Prince Aly Khan and Hon. Joan Barbara Yarde-Buller, in 1969. During her marriage to His Highness The Aga Khan, her official name was Her Highness Begum Salimah, although she remained informally known as Sally. Following their divorce in 1995, she kept the title of "Princess".

[edit] Charitable career
She is now a child-welfare activist and a prominent supporter of the charity SOS Children's Villages.[1] As part of her welfare activity she has also visited Afghan refugees in Pakistan[2] as well as victims of the 2005 earthquake.[3]

She has also been active in the Aga Khan Development Network.

[edit] Personal life
She has three children with the Aga Khan Princess Zahra Aga Khan (b. September 18, 1970), Prince Rahim Aga Khan (b. October 12, 1971), Prince Hussain Aga Khan (b. April 10, 1974).

Today she lives in London with Philippe Lizop, the French lawyer who secured her divorce settlement

The studio

Took a few photos of dads studio,when I saw Ann yesterday.Also one of the living room which is unchanged note the picture of Aram in the background

There is a humidifier in the studio which should keeep the pictures in good condition

Also got this unusual photo of Dad which I think dates from his Oxford days first time round say 1940

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