Watching the geese at Hough End Hall sometime in the 1940s

Now sometimes the picture is pretty much all you need and so it is with this one.

We are on the low wall which ran along Nell Lane looking across at the geese with Hough End Hall away to our left and the farm buildings containing the pig sty belonging to Mr Bailey which also housed Jimmy Ryan’s rabbits on our right.

I don’t have a date but the young girl in the middle with the striped jumper is Miss Veronica Jones which I guess places the picture sometime in the early 1940s.

She told Peter that they were there on the wall “feeding Geese and then ‘snuck’ up to look in at the window as a dare.”

All of which makes the photograph a remarkable piece of history, for not only do we have a rare glimpse of the Hall in its last years as a farm but have a name and a set of memories.

And by comparing it with the plan of the hall and farm buildings drawn by Oliver Bailey we can place our three young people including Miss Veronica Jones exactly on the spot where they sat.

So there you have it and I rather hope this will spark more memories and pictures.

Picture; of the hall, courtesy of Miss Veronica Jones, date unknown