Monday 29th June - Photo Exhibition

The exhibition of my collection of old photographs of Chitterne was on the village green for two days this last weekend. The weather was great, the people poured in and everyone seemed to like it. The hanging system we had devised by trial and error worked fine and it was easy to peel off all the sheets of photos using sticky hooks and loops for overnight storage. SH had planted some of my own pots up with white geraniums and busy-lizzies to add interest. They looked beautiful in a group at the entrance, and decorating the arrangement of old farm machine wheels loaned by AS.

Daughter 1 arrived unexpectedly from London and I was very glad she was around to help. Daughter 3 had made one of her wonderful signs of individual card letters hanging from fishing line. This we hung across the end of the tent nearest the road. Against the white tent material the black letters looked fantastic and immediately drew admiring comments. So it was well worth the effort.

One of the first visitors was RB, the father of a chap who had dropped in at my house last year when researching his Chitterne ancestors. RB brought with him a large wallet of copied photographs for me to keep! I was amazed, as always, by the generosity of folk. I can't remember having helped his son that much! All eleven photos in the wallet were new to me. They were family photos of the Poldens, mostly, but there was one taken in the first World war of a mass of troops camped out on the very green where we were standing. Incredible. It turns out that RB's wife's mother had been a Polden, Georgina Polden, sister of Ernie Polden the builder who'd lived just across the green in the Poplars. There's more, also with them was RB's sister-in-law, who had brought with her an old photo of Polden & Feltham workers, wanting to know if I could identify the men on it. I had seen a picture very like this one, but I couldn't tell the names until I remembered where it was later that day. I found it amongst a stash of writings and drawings given me by EG some years ago, with the men named on it. A very auspicious start to the exhibition.

First thing Saturday it was cool, but gradually it hotted up and we had to open another section of the tent to let in more air. At lunchtime daughter 2, grandson and dog had arrived so all we picnicked outside under the jubilee tree. DF an ex-villager from Warminster came and was so full of information about Polden & Feltham that I couldn't keep up taking notes. We vowed to meet up for a proper interview at a later date. But of special interest to me was his father having been the one to coat the round end of our house for the Poolmans in 1950, using a mix of Mendip Dust and cement, which dried very hard. The tent was packed with new villagers, old villagers, ex-villagers, loads of people.