There are hundreds of unknown faces amongst the photographs on the Broadland Memories website. With images dating as far back as the late 19th century, it’s a fair bet that many will never be identified, although I always live in hope that some of the more interesting looking characters may eventually have a name put to their face.
It has certainly happened in the past – I had someone contact me who recognised himself as a young lad sitting on a fishing box outside Dydler’s Mill in a photograph from 1966, and a lady emailed me to let me know that she had spotted her great grandfather in one Edwardian photograph – only the second photo the family had ever seen of him! It’s always nice when something like that that happens and many people stumble across the website whilst researching their family history.
Having uploaded a small set of photos from 1972 onto the website last week, I have now finally turned my attention to the wonderful collection of black and white photographs which were taken by the late John Chesney in the 1970s. I have already featured a few of these on previous blog posts, having been sent a big box full of images and general Broads ephemera by his wife, Joyce, several months ago. The quality of the photographs is just superb, beautifully shot and developed and printed by John himself at the time. It’s been a truly difficult task this week to try and whittle down the collection and choose which ones to display on the website, and I now have just over 100 of them to add to the Broadland Memories galleries over the next few weeks. They will probably be uploaded in two or three separate batches. All of this selection have been straightened, cropped and remastered and I will hopefully make a start on adding and captioning the first batch next week. I’ve already done some of the research but, as usual, there will be a lot more to do as I go along.
Ranworth open air service - Easter 1978
Which brings me to the title of this post! Amongst the collection are a set of three images taken at Ranworth over the Easter weekend in 1978 which show the then Bishop of Norwich, Maurice Wood, conducting an open air service. There are many faces in the crowd and a band set up on a pallet wood stage, guitars in hand, ready to play. I’d love to know who this band were – they were presumably local to the area and comprised of a bunch of young lads. Were you one of the musicians or do you know who they were? Or are you one of the faces in the crowd? And what, exactly, was the service about? Was it a one off for Easter that year, or did this happen more than once? Just click on the image to view it in full size.
At a later date I also have a selection of 80s and 90s photographs which were taken by John to add to the website – watch the blog over the next few weeks for a preview of some of those which show some rather dramatic events in Broadland’s history!
