A New Years Resolution: Preserving Dad's Photographic Inheritance - 50 Years On

It was some time ago that I blogged here about my long-overdue intention to preserve my Dad's photographic collection from the 1960s and 1970s.

Potato Harvesting in south
Pembrokeshire in 1962

Almost 1,000 slides depicting family and social life in south Pembrokeshire had remained in boxes for the best part of 20 years. These were photos which he had developed himself in his own dark room back at our Hungerford Farm and we are now 50 years on.

The job of transferring them to modern media was only finally completed by myself, after initial help from Scolton Manor, last year in time for the 10th anniversary of Dad's death in June 2003. I have however not given them the wider attention that is available to me with modern media and I plan to put this right.

I therefore cast my New Year's Resolution to showcase more of those photos through my blog to remind us of this bygone era. Photos that will show that in some ways, so much has changed in 50 years and some in contrast that show the contrary.

Potato Harvesting

Work and play!

I begin with a throwback a full half-century to the early 1960s and to the communal rural activity of potato harvesting.

Here we see neighbours helping neighbours with what was a routine but necessary and time-consuming activity.The necessity could at least be turned on its head and made into a social occasion as neighbouring families would help each other out each year with their crop.

Men, women and children would do what was required and here we see such examples in south Pembrokeshire. The first and third photos are taken at Martin's Hill Farm near Martletwy.