We’re all used to seeing pictures of the past in stark black and white but now for the first time there’s a chance to see how the past really looked. Our new series takes applies a colourisation process to some familiar scenes in towns in Wales and the borders and transforms them in to glorious colour.
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School days! Who can forget them hey? For the more mature amongst you, the smell of boiled cabbage, the sound of chalk furiously attacking blackboards, the sadistic whip of a cold-hearted cane, and the monotonous recital of Latin will have all conspired in darkened corridors to create a period of life unlike no other. For those of fresher face and leaner year, there will be a host of different memories associated with the learned life. The shrill cry of a red-faced and slightly overweight PE teacher. The dreaded two-fold weariness of Monday morning, double math. The bite of an all-conquering conker on a sore knuckle come a crisp October morning, and the riotous stampede of dirty white trainers, scuffed Doc Martins and Joe Bloggs beating a triumphant march to liberation come Friday afternoon, 3.30 pm.Former pupils of the old Brightlands Preparatory School in Newnham may remember struggling over their Latin translations under the tutelage of Geoffrey Peck (pictured), who retired in 1990 having been at the school for some 30 years. He was appointed assistant headmaster in 1976. (Pic supplied)
Here’s some food for thought, but it’s probably best to look away now if you adhere to a vegan lifestyle. It’s Eastman’s butchers back in the day. And the day we’re taking is sometime in the early 20th Century. The venue is 24 Frogmore Street. The past is often a bloody and brutal business and it doesn’t get any bloodier than these boys. Take a butcher's at these no-nonsense meat and cleaver men. Is that claret on their otherwise pristine white aprons?These gentlemen of the chopping board spent their days knee-high in offal and elbow-deep in guts to bring the good people of Abergavenny their choice cuts and Sunday joints. Before the age of health and safety regs, the apron was a man’s best friend when it came to wiping away the blood of a butchered animal. Nowadays of course our stomachs would turn and sensibilities shudder at the thought of someone resembling Leatherface from the Texas Chainsaw Massacre serving us our sausages. Nor for that matter would we particularly want to see animal carcasses hanging outside a shop like an unsavoury advertisement for wholesale slaughter. But times change and so too do shopping habits. (Pic supplied )
Way back in 1798 when William Wordsworth wrote, “The still, sad music of humanity” had neither power to “chasten nor subdue” when a soul was in the presence of “A presence that disturbs me with the joy of elevated thoughts, a sense sublime.” The poet was of course talking about the Wye Valley and the ruins of Tintern Abbey. As anyone who has visited these romantic ruins will testify, its roofless majesty still strikes a chord in exactly the same key that would have resounded with Wordsworth and artists such as JMW Turner all those moons ago. In centuries to come will the ruins of new builds have the same effect on the soul of a sensitive soul wandering lonely as a cloud? (Pic supplied )