Moody view of the Triumphal Arch
Yesterday the post arrived and out of the blue was a large packet, with the words “Please Do Not Bend” emblazened across the top left corner. I had no idea what it could be as I was not expecting anything. So imagine my delight when I discovered that it contained a photograph from 1914 of Parlington being used as a hospital; a fact, hitherto unknown. I had often wondered what Parlington had been used for during the First World War, as numerous accounts had suggested that troops were here. However I had always taken it that the troops had camped in the area beside the driveway to the Triumphal Arch, and photographs verified this. The picture has now been added to the history site, here.
This event got me thinking, is it likely there will be local evidence of how places looked when our descendents are perusing their family and local history in a hundred or so years in the future? I noticed that seven or eight years ago there were a fair number of postcards available of Aberford, going back to the beginning of the twentieth century, mostly available on eBay. This has now dried up to a large extent, and very little in any case of how the village looked after the nineteen fifties. Clearly the advent of easy to use and cheap cameras, knocked a big hole in the postcard market. Also with the demise of places being stopping off points, such as Aberford, with modern cars capable of travelling upwards of 300 miles on a tank of fuel, and with improved main arterial roads like the motorways [I know this is not always true, as a trip round the M25 testifies!]
I say this because although people take more pictures now than ever before, so many are stored on computers! I have a natural wariness of electronic devices being secure! CD ROM’s are certainly not infallible, I can testify to this. Also I am not convinced that in twenty years time, Flickr and other photo sites will be able to provide us with pictures of yesteryear. When it comes down to it paper prints are pretty good! Anyhow until the time of the great electrical failure comes; here is a view of the Triumphal Arch that caught my attention this afternoon, very moody, as we approach the bi-centenary of the death of Sir Thomas Gascoigne in February 1810.