Hi Ebba
So glad you came back to see the mystery solved - and indeed I sympathise with your house move - having done it a couple of times myself
I have an interest in local history - mainly the buildings and architecture. I saw your post and the pictures quite some time ago whilst searching online for something unrelated. I didn't immediately recognise the house - and the image of the street eluded me too. I concluded the house must have been elsewhere and not in our neighbourhood. It was only recently whilst searching again for something unrelated - I came across this thread & your pictures again. I thought the only way I could identify the house would be to identify the picture of the street. I thought about all of the long straight roads we have - and there aren't that many - and then out of the blue it dawned on me where it might have been! The rest is history (earlier in this thread) about how I identified the street and the house
I have just set up a Facebook page about our area - its past & present. I posted the images of the house - and amazingly one person responded who actually lived in the upstairs part of the house for a short while. Others have posted who remember the house - and one lady (a girl at the time) who used to call in to meet a friend who lived there. The house was demolished for redevelopment later than I thought - in the late '80s. I understand it was terribly run down - empty and derelict towards the end. The gardens were massively overgrown (you couldn't ever see the property from the road to my knowledge) and the house was vandalised and played in by the local kids. Alas I never got to see the house myself even though it is literally just a few hundred yards from where I live!
It is a great shame the house was demolished - and it has happened to many of the large urban houses standing in large grounds here. The land was simply worth an awful lot more for redevelopment to build an estate of houses as I'm sure is the case everywhere in this country. There are nearly 40 houses on the original plot of The Limes - and the field behind the original house now has houses & a large apartment complex built on it. You can see the map of the area here
https://www.google.com/maps?ll=53.039078,-2.221084&spn=0.002151,0.003921&t=h&z=18Quite how the album landed in a junk shop - who knows... My guess would be it belonged to a relative of a former owner of The Limes living in your area. I guess when they passed away the contents of their house were removed by a house clearance company. It could well have been cleared by the junk shop owner?
I was going to offer to buy the album from you
- but I agree it would perhaps be better if it went to a local archive. I would suggest the archive department at Newcastle Under Lyme library. Porthill is in the borough of Newcastle Under Lyme - so it would be the logical resting place for the album. They have a great archives department - with a catalogue of local photographs which are available to view on request. I checked recently and there are no pictures of The Limes - so it would be a wonderful addition to the Library - and would also allow people to gain access and view the pictures for themselves. Indeed I would love to be able to hand the album over to the chief archivist along with this story
All the best
C.
