This week's pictures from the past

It looks like a holiday camp doesn't it? And, given the present use of this site, you wouldn't be far from the target area if you thought that.

This is the Wyre Farm School Camp, also know as the City of Coventry Boarding School, near Cleobury Mortimer.

The school opened in 1940 for children evacuated from the Coventry blitz. It closed in 1982, according to an old newspaper cutting, and these days it is the Pioneer activity centre and Pioneer conference centre "providing the best outdoor education, holidays and training in the UK, for today's most important people – youth", according to its brochure.

This picture is among Pioneer's archives and is undated. The 1950s maybe?

These dancers are performing at an unknown Shrewsbury garden fete around the mid-1930s. The tall dancer on the right is Miss Hilda Moore, born in 1919, of Shrewsbury.

This photo was loaned to us by Hilda's sister Mrs Sybil Waite, who is now aged 82, of Shrewsbury. "We were living at High Street then. We were all born at the top of Wyle Cop," she says. On marriage Hilda became Mrs Hilda Ralphs.

This picture was taken during the rebuilding of the English Bridge, Shrewsbury, and comes to us via Shrewsbury author and historian David Trumper. It was one of a number he was given by a woman from Shrewsbury, who does not want to be identified.

In actual fact the print we copied is a mirror image of this, with the wording at the very top of the picture written backwards – we have flipped it over as we assume that this is the correct orientation, with the words reading "Pier No 3, remains of the old foundation, April 8th, 1926".

The original picture, Dave thinks, was probably taken by a photographer named Mallinson from Frankwell, who worked around Shrewsbury.

Let's take a trip back in time to Ditton Priors of yesteryear.

We're not sure exactly when, but this postcard may be from about 100 years ago, and shows "Ditton Priors Post Office and General Stores".

What on earth is hanging in front of the windows? Surely they weren't drying some rugs?

Picture: Ray Farlow

It is thanks to Keith Lewis, of Wellington, that we can bring you this historic photo of the Rats Pit, Oakengates.

"I do house clearances and a lot of stuff gets thrown away. I root around and rescue odd bits," said Keith.

This photo was one such salvaged item. On the back of the print it says, in ink: "G.F. Hill, The Nabb" and then separately in pencil, in different writing: "Rats Pit, nr Oakengates, photographed about 1899."

Would you like your hair cut, sir? This is J.G. Moore hairdresser at 80 Wyle Cop, Shrewsbury, and the date is 1905.

Hairdresser John George Moore, with the moustache, is with his son Wilfred Moore, who was destined to take over from him. The photo was loaned by Wilfred's daughter, Mrs Sybil Waite, aged 82, of Shrewsbury.

There may be some older folk in Wellington who remember this Russian lady who appears to have been quite a character in the town about 60 years ago.

She is pictured here in Wellington on what seems to have been a rainy day around the late 1940s or early 1950s.

She was Tatiana Babushka, and presumably the parrot was her pet. This photo comes to us via historian Phil Fairclough, who has been researching the stories of people who came to Shropshire from Eastern Europe in the post-war period.

If you remember Tatiana, why not drop us a line?