The true delight of old family photographs is that they can take you back in time, not just to the years of your youth, but to those impossibly distant times before you were born. Here is a photograph of a group of people posing in front of a large stone structure with a lighthouse in the background. I am able to recognise two people in the group: my grandfather, Enoch Burnett, standing on the left, and my grandmother, Harriet Ellen Burnett, standing seven places to his left. Enoch died in December 1948, a few months after I was born, so the photograph was probably taken somewhere around 1946 or 1947, when travel was starting up again after the end of the war.
The occasion was probably an outing from one of the local chapel groups to the seaside. With other branches of my family, I might be tempted to suggest it was a pub or working men’s club outing, but not with Enoch and Harriet, and the group has a decidedly sober appearance. Some years ago, I managed to work out the location of the photograph, and it was the popular seaside resort of New Brighton. This should not be confused with fashionable Brighton, which was on the East Sussex coast; this was on the banks of the River Mersey, a mile or so from Birkenhead and just across the river from Liverpool.
New Brighton was a popular destination for bus trips from East Lancashire and West Yorkshire; I can recall many of my childhood holidays at one or more boarding houses in the town. Enoch and Harriet lived all their lives in the Great Horton district of Bradford, so it seems likely that the group was from there. It’s sad to think that this is Enoch in his final months of life. Comparing the photographs with others I have of him, it is almost a though some of the life has already been drained out of him. Harriet lived for another ten years after this photograph was taken, and I have more formed memories of her. For Enoch, however, my memories are constructed from oft-told family stories and images such as this one of an outing to New Brighton.
This photo must have been taken a year or two before I was born. That’s my grandfather, Enoch Burnett, on the left, and my grandmother, Harriet Ellen, seven to his left. It was taken in New Brighton, just across the water from Liverpool. And Liverpool is where I am heading for a few days. Perhaps I will go in search of the spot where Enoch stood.
alanburnett.com 