Don & Eileen at the seaside

This must have been taken sometime between 1946 and 1952, after Don had been demobbed but before they had children of their own. I would guess they must be somewhere on the south coast and it is a shingle beach. It looks a bit breezy too; Eileen's hair is being blown about and they are all keeping their jackets on.

The other couple are my godparents, Dennis & Maisie Smith. I haven't seen they since they emigrated to Australia in the early 1960s. They used to run the off licence in Bostall Manorway, Abbey Wood. They had two sons - the younger one was about a year or so older than me. But that would still leave the schoolgirl on the left of the second picture (notice her straw boater matching her uniform) unaccounted for. But of course the group also included the unseen photographer.

Ada's National Registration Identity Card

Maybe the current debate about identity cards is not so new after all. Here is Ada's card. The first entry is dated 29 May 1943, so maybe these were introduced as a wartime security measure. But it looks as if the powers that be were not keen to relax the rules once hostilities were over, as the latest entry was made on 16 November 1951. But from a genealogical point of view, this card provides a useful record of where Ada was living.

As I have suggested in previous posts, the move to Walsingham Lodge was probably connected with husband Albert's work for the Ministry of Supply. After the war, they would have needed to vacate this address, but their old house in Basildon Road, Abbey Wood was bombed during the war and had not then been rebuilt. So the move to Royal Parade must have been a temporary expedient as they were only there three months. Next stop was 623 Westhorne Avenue SE9, but again only for a few months. Possibly she was staying with her sister Lyn Saward, who I know lived in Eltham. September 1946 sees her at 10 Red Hill, Chislehurst, where I believe she and Albert settled - and where Albert died in August 1950. The final entry finds her at Scrips, Coggeshall, Essex. I am looking for information about Scrips, but I think her visit here must only have been temporary as she subsequently lived at various addresses in Chislehurst.

Neither Ada nor Bert ever moved back to Basildon Road, but the house stayed in the family as their son Donald and his wife moved there in 1948.