This week's Pictures from the Past

The franking date on this postcard showing Upper Church Street, Oswestry, is too faint to read, but the stamp depicts our current queen, so it must have been sent some time after 1952. However, the view itself looks rather earlier – no doubt a transport expert would be able to use the vehicle on the right as a dating clue. On the corner is

J Owen family butcher and the Coach & Dogs tea rooms (according to the signs). The hanging sign on the extreme right reads "A Walker House".

Picture: Mrs Diana Humphreys.

It's amazing what you can find when you take old photo frames apart. Mrs Val Burgess of Arleston brought in this photo which, we think, shows the old Shrewsbury council outside Shrewsbury Castle, where it used to meet. The date, we would guess, is the 1950s.

Val said: "My mum, Mrs Veronica Jones of Baschurch, was sorting some stuff out the other day and found a picture my granddad put together 39 years ago.

"I think it was of mum and dad's wedding.

"When we took it apart we found this in the back of it." The council photo was being used as the hard backing.

Val said her father Geoffrey Jones could recognise one person. Second row up, seventh from the left, is Jack Smout.

However, all these people will have been familiar figures from public life in the county town and no doubt there are many older Salopians who can put names to most, if not all, of these faces.

Clifford Challinor of Pontesford e-mailed this photo which he took in 1960 and told us: "The occasion was the annual youth weekend of the Shropshire Baptist Churches. The venue was at Eaton Mascott Hall, near Cross Houses, which at that time was used by Sir Alfred and Lady Owen from Sutton Coldfield. It would be interesting to know how many of the folk can be identified by your readers.

"I was the secretary of the Youth Council then, and would be interested to know where they are today."

Clifford Challinor of Pontesford took this photo of the Pontesbury Baptist Church Sunday School 50 years ago, in 1959. He names them as: back, from left – Barbara Houlding, Peter Speake, Ronald Edwards, Peter Lakelin, Patrick Yates, Elaine Walmsley, Sandra Hayward, Jean Mansell, Margaret Lakelin, Elizabeth Carswell, Cynthia Edwards, Betty Hannah, Elizabeth Haughton and Stella Bailey.

Front row – Barbara Carswell, unknown, Janet Carswell, Charles Overton, David Middle, Barbara Walmsley, Bernadette and Susette Elwell.

These are the members of the Corset Silhouette factory's ladies football team at Dorrington agricultural show, pictured some time in the 1960s. The photo was taken by Ernie Gwilliam of Bayston Hill, although Ernie can't remember the exact date.

"I don't know the girls names. One of them married a Shrewsbury Town player – it may have been Peter Dolby.

"The show was held on a field just through Dorrington on the A49. They played a men's team from the village. Someone will probably remember some names," he said.

Wrekin Amateur Radio Society holds its annual dinner at the Charlton Arms Hotel, Wellington, in 1952.

The photo comes from George Shepherd, of Dawley Road, Wellington.

He names them as, standing, from left: himself George Shepherd and XYL (George explains this means Ex Young Lady and is an amateur radio term for wife) ie Ida Shepherd, Jeff Bagley, Chas Tranter, Don Breeze, Geoff Myatt and XYL (George doesn't recall her name, nor those of some of the other XYLs present).

Left side, top to bottom: Frank Tobin and XYL, Peter Ross, Bill Bishton and XYL, unknown, D Jewkes and Frank Davis.

Right side, top to bottom: Derek Wright, Cliff Oakes Jones and XYL, Ted Deakin and his wife Mary, Dave McCurrie and Phillip Johnson.