HOW lucky we are to have readers able and willing to share their old photographs with us. Our thanks this week must go to Marilyn Sealy of West Bay who has lent us nearly 50 of her family photographs.

We’re sure there are quite of few of them that will bring back memories for many of our readers.

It’ll take us some weeks to publish them all but we think they’re worth it.

Many of the photos belonged to her late uncle Alf Hallett and she had to clear his bungalow out when he died 12 years ago.

Mrs Sealy said: “Unfortunately all his photos were stuck with this awful thick glue and I had to prise them apart so I had to throw a lot of them away.

“I kept the more interesting ones though.”

So in the following weeks we’ll see pictures of her mother Lucy Hallett, who worked in Elmes, her dad Albert Chubb, who worked at Gundrys, her uncle Alf Hallett and his brother-in-law Don Crumpton.

Her uncle’s wife was Marjorie-Ann, known in the family as Queenie and her father was Albert Crumpton, who was an engine driver on the branch line that included West Bay.

Mrs Sealy said: “He must have done quite well because he bought the plot of land in Bradpole in 1932/3 and paid hardly any money for it. He paid off his mortgage within a few years.

“It had a very long garden which he cultivated and sold the produce along the stations in Powerstock, Toller and Maiden Newton and did quite well out of it I think.”

Many of her pictures are of rural scenes of the times – including one of her uncle’s wife Marjorie-Ann podding peas in the back garden There are other rural scenes too – bee keeping and one of a hay rick.

She said: “Mr Crumpton used to grow the most wonderful tomatoes and he’d never reveal his secret except to say something about ‘hoof and horn’ but would never say exactly what he put on there.”

There’s a picture of The Lily Hotel with Majorie-Ann Crumpton. The hotel is now a children’s nursery at the bottom of West Street.

Her uncle Alf married in April, 1940. In their front garden they had a lovely pond and they built their shelter in the garden – and obviously practised wearing gas masks.

Majorie-Ann worked at Elmes, where she became manageress, until she was 70.

Mrs Sealy said: “They didn’t have any children. We always joked when she gives up the shop will close and it did.”

Mrs Sealy’s father was Albert Chubb. He worked in the netting firm from age of 14 when he left school – he worked in the office for 51 years, apart from the war years.

He started at the court at Gundrys and worked for William James, which was all part of Rendle and Coombes but they also had a warehouse in Magdalene Lane, now the site of senior accommodation.

He was called up at the end of 1942 and he went to Algers in the RAF where he worked in the stores.

He went to Italy after the war finished and was finally demobbed in April, 1946.

When he came back he went to work for Gales.

He became sales manager five years before he retired.

His colleague was Arthur Crabb and they were known as Chubb and Crabb of the fishing department, she said.

Mrs Sealy also has a picture of the very first Plottingham bridge. Her dad had an allotment the other side of the river and instead of using the bridge across from Bridport Industries private land they had to walk all the way round, even carrying all his produce.

He didn’t want anyone to see his children going across the bridge in case others followed and all his beans got pinched, she said.

Her mother Lucy Hallett is featured in many of the photographs. Her first job after leaving Allington School was working at Elmes and there are many of their Thursday afternoon outings – Thursdays were half days.

She was apprenticed for three years but left afterwards. She also worked at the department store Perkins which was where the Beach and Barnicott is now. It sold furniture, haberdashery and clothes.

She had a spell in Roberts Bakery – the only place she ever put on weight, said Mrs Sealy. She married Albert Chubb in 1935.