Your chance to make history ……..

It is just one of those things that we have few pictures of the Rec during the middle and late 20th century.

Football in the Rec, 1980

Go back to the 1900s and there are heaps of images taken by professional photographers which made their way into the catalogues of picture postcard companies.

But by the 1940s there are fewer of these postcards in existence, and after that the Rec is less well recorded.

So, I have an aerial photograph sometime in the 1930s, another taken during the last world war of a barrage balloon, and a third showing the recreational ground minus its railings.

After that there are two from Tony Walker of the Peace Festival in 1984, and my own collection which starts in 1979 and runs through to now.

But in total we may only be talking of 40 or so, and that is a shame.

Woman, baby, see-saw, 1910

In a conversation with Declan of the Friends of Beech Road today we concluded that there must be shedloads of “snaps” taken over the decades which sit locked away in photo albums, or carefully filed away at the back of a wardrobe.

And that brings me to the appeal.  I would love to see any pictures of the Rec.  

They can be family ones, ones which are a tad blurred or dog eared ….. the quality is less important than what they record.

There will be some who mutter “so what”, but that is to rubbish the importance of the Rec as a place to play football, meet friends, or just sit and watch. 

A place that has been doing that since 1896.

Music in the Rec, 2006

As someone who has lived opposite it for 47 years and stood on the doorstep calling in our sons at the end of the day from their football games, long after the sun has gone down, it is a special place, and will be for plenty of others.

Playing the Rec, 2020

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Vanished shelter, 1980

Location; The Rec

Making the pose, 1980

Pictures, football on the Rec, circa 1980, the long-vanished shelter, 1980, park apparatus, Beech Road Festival, 2006, 2020, from the collection of Andrew Simpson, woman, children and see saws, 1910 from the Lloyd Collection