A batch of Old Photographs

These are all photographs copied whilst on a visit to my father on February 23rd 2018

Photographs from Italy

My grandfather Giulio Cesare Schiff had many photograph albums. The oldest contained these photographs which have been removed from that album, but I had already copied them on a visit in 1970.

My great grandmother Emilia Finza and her younger sister Elsa

My grandfather Giulio Cesare Schiff as a child

My great grandparents, Silvio Schiff and Emilia Finzi

My grandfather Giulio Cesare Schiff

My grandfather Giulio Cesare Schiff with his mother

My grandfather Giulio Cesare Schiff

My grandfather Giulio Cesare Schiff

My great grandmother Emilia Finzi

My Father's Childhood

My paternal grandparents, Frank William Gent and Beatrice Evaline Neild, at the time of their wedding and honeymoom

My father, Frank Dennis Gent, holding a turkey at Sharston Farm

My father with his mother's youngest sister Gladys at Sharston Farm

Dennis, Philip and Lyn Gent playing at Sharston Farm

My father at St Margaret's Primary School, Moss Side. He is in the second row, to the left of the boy in a cap

My father outside 147 Bishop Street, Moss Side, with his cousin Olive Shaw from London

My father setting off on his bicycle for a camping expedition with a friend

A summer holiday at Newton's Farm, Langdale End: my grandfather with my father, Philip and Lyn in the river Derwent

My grandmother with her mother, Georgina Henrietta Neild, née Thompson

My great grandfather, Frank Turner Gent

More Photographs from Italy

Silvio Schiff, my mother's paternal grandfather

Silvio Schiff in 1920

My grandparents with my mother and Silvana in Trieste

My grandmother, Caterina Schiff née Madriz, on the roof of Palermo cathedral with her children Liliana, Silvana, Sergio and Luciana

Albania

A cigarette holder that I believe is the sole relic of my mother's family's sojourn in Albania

My grandfather in Albania

My grandmother with friends, probably in Albania

My grandmother, presumably in Albania with colleagues of my grandfather

A group photograph, presumably in Albania. I cannot recognise any faces

The Return to Italy from Albania

When my mother's family fled Albania though found refuge with her mother's sister Maria in Gorizia, until my grandfather was able to come out of hiding and join them. This is my mother with her sister Luciana and brother Sergio, at the Remembrance Park in Gorizia with their cousin Ada, Maria's daughter.

After the War

My father with a cigarette in his mouth

My mother holding her sister Loredana, together with her father and her sister Luciana. The date cannot be correct though, as by then she was already in England to marry my father

My aunt Loredana as an infant

My parents' marriage certificate, 29th June 1946

Stella

The weight card from the clinic for my sister Stella, who suffered from a congenital heart defect and died aged ten months

Stella Grace Gent

Stella

Stella

Stella with our grandfather

A smocked dress made for Stella by my mother. My father found this after my mother's death in her drawer, where she had kept it hidden all her life

My great grandmother with my grandmother, father, and my sister Valerie, on the occasion of her 75th birthday in 1951

My paternal grandparents

The Coronation

Our council house, 6 Painswick Road, Woodhouse Park, Wythenshawe, Manchester, decorated by my father for the coronation on 2nd June 1953. Valerie and myself. Over the front door is my bedroom window.

My father with myself and Rina

Valerie dressed in her pink angora bolero for the coronation

Luciana and Sergio

Luciana and Sergio at their wedding. From the left are Zia Elsa Finzi, ?, Silvana, Nonna Caterina, Sergio's mother, Luciana, Sergio's father (in glasses), my grandfather, Sergio Grancini and his brother.

Sergio and Luciana's honeymoon: a visit to England. At the centre bottom is the living room of 6 Painswick Road.

My father in our living room, with our radio and our new record player he bought for my mother

An invitation to my other to attend a reception on the Training Ship 'Amerigo Vespucci' on its visit to Manchester. I saw this ship on its visit to Trieste in 2016.

My mother, Rita the sister of her friend Anna, and Franca, with three sailors on the ship

My maternal grandmother

My maternal grandparents in the 1950s. My grandmother died in May 1960.

Lyn and Norman's Wedding, September 1957

The garden at Mons Hall, created by my grandparents

My mother at Lyn and Norman's wedding in 1957.

I think somebody is push starting an Austin 7, at the foot of Berry Hill.

My grandfather, Lyn and my grandmother talk to my father.

My mother, Dana and my grandmother at a picnic, probably next to the river Torridge at Brimblecombe Brake.

Philip drives the tractor, Ralph is waving, with Valerie, Rina and myself on the trailer.

Jean and Fred's Wedding

Fred James with my great grandmother, and Jean McIntyre, my great aunt Mabel's daughter, at her wedding in 1959.

My father's cousin Pamela Brett in the middle, and my sister Valerie on the right, at Jean McIntyre's wedding.

The 1960s

Luciana and Sergio with my cousin Stefano.

Myself with Rina on the occasion of her first communion.

Luciana and Sergio must have come with Stefano and Loredana to visit us in about 1966. I guess this was at Belle Vue.

Myself with Sergio and my father. Behind me is the mahogany bureau from the Rev. James Turner, with the Odhams Dictionary, Encyclopaedia and Works of Shakespeare, and behind my father is the longcase clock given to me by our neighbour Mr Leopold Lorant on his death.

My father and Sergio in front of the white marble fireplace. On the overmantel is a brass dish that I still have.

Rina with Sergio in front of the bureau.

Rina with my father and mother in what we called the scullery. To the left is the old Ascot water heater. Behind my father is the old back door which we no longer used. My mother always lost weight when she saw her family from Italy.

My sister Valerie with her boyfriend Peter Downs.

Valerie and Peter's wedding in January 1966. On the far left is our neighbour Mrs Poppy Berry of 14 Manley Road, and on the far right is Teddy Deane of 12 Manley Road. My mother is left of centre.

My aunt Loredana.

My Aunt Luciana.

My mother and Dana with Hosney Farghaly.

My Album from 1963

This album vanished many years ago, but it resurfaced at my father's last week and I reclaimed it. Several of the 76 photos had gone.

Dana with Louise berry in the terrible winter of 1962–63.

Dana

Rina and her snowman.

Lola the poodle

My mother returning from shopping, with a glimpse of the fine Victorian gates and the conical holly bush.

The front porch at 16 Manley Road, framed by the icicle-covered Mme Caroline Testout rose.

Lola on the sofa in the rarely-used 'Front Room'. Behind her is a framed mural of a Canadian lake.

My father next to his first vehicle, a Ford Thames van,

Dana in the snow.

I made this snowman on and around the cast iron Victorian tazza that I now have. To the right is the door to the paint cellar, which my grandfather excavated under the house. here cans of paint and rolls of wallpaper were stored for the business.

The Catholic Whit Walks in Manchester pass from Albert Square to the side of the Central Library.

Members of the Polish community carry a statue of Mary and Jesus.

More walkers. I think the top-hatted person is a clergyman.

St Anthony of Padua is carried.

This antique round mirror now hands over my desk in front of me, but 55 years ago it hung in the living room at Mons Hall, and before that it hung over the bureau at Manley Road. To the left can be seen the sword and scabbard that I think may once have belonged to my great great great grandfather John Gent, a captain in the Cheshire Yeomanry during the napoleonic wars, and below it is the ancient family mule chest that I now have. In the corner are some small shelves that were carved by one of the Misses Wagstaffe of Leek, friends of my great grandfather. She also made the square lidded box in the hall that contained very many old family photographs that unfortunately were much damaged by the damp in the hall..

The goldfish pond at Mons Hall made by Ralph,

My cousins Helen and Grace Baker with a pet white rabbit.

I think this is the view from Berry Hill towards Iddesleigh.

We discovered this and called it Quarry Falls, in the stream next to the paddock.

Swallows nesting, probably in the hayloft above the shippen.

A heifer in the field called Poolmaid, with Cow Lane on the horizon. Poolmaid was originally Pool Mead, and the head pond for Dowland Mill.

A family parchment charter from the Civil War period, later given to me by my grandfather.

I think this is the view towards West Park Wood, from the path across Brimblecombe to the Torridge.

The view of Mons Hall from the top field on the Whitemoor road.

Babbacombe: my grandparents often took us on coach outings with local groups in the villages.

Another view of Babbacombe.

Exeter cathedral, on another trip, with cars parked in the Cathedral Yard, and the church of St Mary Major on the right, later demolished.

Rina at Westward Ho!, on yet another outing, wearing a dress I remember my mother making.

Valerie at Westward Ho!

Helen in her push chair at Dowland Mill.

Grace and Helen gathering hay by the river Torridge.

Grace by the Torridge.

Helen and Grace.

Piglets at Mons Hall, offspring of my grandfather's 'ladies'.

Ralph's white fantail pigeons with their feathered feet.

Laddie and a farm cat in front of the shippen with the cows in there. Two empty churns wait to be filled with milk.

Piglets' snouts under the door of the first room. This was once living accommodation and in recent years it has been returned to humans.

A slowworm under a board in the kitchen garden at Mons Hall

In 1964 I cycled to Alcumlow Hall, the birthplace of my great great grandfather Dr Henry Gent.

My aunt Silvana lived with us in the early 1960s.

Alexandra Park and the Replacement Cactus House c. 1974

I think this might have been where there was once a very large ornamental rockery

The swings, where I often played.

The New Cactus House

This is a 1909 postcard that shows the original cactus house in Alexandra Park which is how I remember it.

My grandfather, Giulio Cesare Schiff, when I visited in August 1970.

My grandfather with his eight children.

This is Honiton lace that I made whilst living in Okehampton in 1972.

I bought this Athena reproduction for my parents when my father redecorated the front room at Manley Road c. 1968.

Franca and my mother in the front porch at Manley Road.

My father, Steve, Franca and my mother.

A report in the Jewish Chronicle of my son's Bar Mitzvah in 1997.

A letter I wrote to my parents from Trieste shortly before I was diagnosed with leukaemia.

Off to hospital, 22nd February 2018

Photos taken the morning of my father's latest operation

Two days after the operation.