Comments on: Little Staughton Google Street View MK44 2BY

By: Ann V

Ann V — Sat, 29 Jun 2019 22:08:33 +0000

Wow Jo. What starts as an innocent little journey ends so dramatically. Stunning piece. So sad.
I agree that people should make good use of Google street view (and satellite view) and- as an archeologist friend advised, take dated screen prints.
Using Google and satellite view, I checked a house my Great grandmother had rented in the summer of 1908 and found to my amazement it was now a small hotel. This summer two cousins and I went there to see where some of our ancestors had wiled away the summer. It was a very strange feeling. In a letter she justified renting the place as it was ‘only an hour and a quarter drive from [her home in] Glasgow. An easy run for an early car owner. At some times of day, it takes the same time to drive it now.

By: Lyn Innes

Lyn Innes — Thu, 27 Jun 2019 15:04:52 +0000

I find it both intriguing and intrusive to follow those google videos — even to the care home in Maroubra, Sydney where my mother spent her final years, and the very remote mountain top farm where I grew up in the 1940s. The house has collapsed and the farm, so determinedly cleared by my father is now covered with brambles and scrubby eucalyptus. So many half-buried histories to be uncovered. I love the way you have done this, moving from the personal childhood memories to the international American involvement.

And intriguing too to discover that your father was a butcher. So was mine, before he left Scotland. His father’s shop remains, still in the family name, in Aboyne.

By: Nigel

Nigel — Thu, 27 Jun 2019 12:38:02 +0000

Such a strong sense of place and family history in the context of national history!