My Granddad riding past the Queen in 1953

ChiffChaff

ChiffChaff

Well-Known Member
Joined
16 January 2012
Messages
576
Visit site
Hello!

I was up in Scotland visiting my grandparents last weekend and filling them in on my horse exploits :rolleyes: when my Gran piped up with 'you know your Granddad rode a horse once?'

I did not know this! NOBODY in my family is remotely horsey, and he had a brief crash course in how to ride before this event, and hasn't ridden since. So, here is my granddad playing the Reiver at the 1953 Dun's Summer Festival.

The Reiver and the Reiver's Lass (my Gran's rival ;) )

grandadhorse.jpg


And riding past the Queen! (He is 5 horses back)

grandadandqueen.jpg


I'm a history nut and love this sort of thing, thought some people might like to see them too xx
 
lovely!! i love seeing old common riding photos :D makes you realise how much has changed. Its Reiver's week next week in Duns, so i will be heading over to watch the horses head out. Do your Grandparents stay in Duns then?
 
Thanks everyone, My Gran had loads of pictures, I love to see all the old clothes and streets etc!

It's in Duns, the Scottish borders I believe. I think the festival was started initially as a 'holiday at home' type of initiative after the war. My grandparents were initially border folk :cool: but now live in Dunfermline, which is just over the Forth from Edinburgh, and is where my dad grew up. He moved to London when he was 19 and met my mum, so we are all softy southerners :D

x
 
He informed me that his mother bought him silk underwear for the occasion, to prevent chafing :cool: but it didn't work! Apparently he was never very comfortable out of a walk, in more ways than one! xx
 
Thank you for the links Rhino and ChestnuttyMare! I've just found my granddads name in the list of past Reivers, I will show him his name, he will be dead pleased!

x
 
what a lovely bit of history Chiffchaff, thanks for sharing.

I love listening to my nan who is in her 90's talk about how she worked on a farm during the war and how they used to ride the cart horses:)
 
IbbleBibble, my great Nan is 101 and born and bred in Bethnal Green (my mothers side!). She remembers amazing things, she saw the suffragettes tied to the Royal London, and remembers her father returning on leave from WWI and giving all the kids nightmares with the stories he told.

During WWII her two children were evacuated during the false start, and returned during the Blitz proper as they were with horrible people. They used to sleep under the beds and wake up with the beds covered in glass from the windows. She also used to make little cakes substituting butter with the fat surrounding Spam that came in the aid packs from the Americans, and she swears blind that a German who had parachuted out of his plane came in to their kitchen one night and ate them all!!

On a sadder note, she also remembers walking the streets of London looking for sticks that she could make a fire with to make a cup of tea during the Great Depression. The welfare state may be flawed, but at least no one has to do that to keep their children warm. Her first job was cutting the ends off of cigarettes so that they were all the same length back in the 1920s when she was about 14.

Funny to think it was only 100years ago!

edit: I've gone on a bit! Sorry!
 
you've not gone on at all!! i find listening to the older generation fascinating, they have seen so much and lived through some real tough times but we tend to just think of them as stuffy old biddies and forget they were once young:o

i went to an agricultural college in somerset, my nan was stationed on the farm there during the war and their rooms were part of an old priory which is now owned by the college and used as dorms!! she has pictures of herself washing her boots at the old pump in the yard, the pump wasn't working when i was at college but it was still there!! She has bags full of pictures of her and the other 'girls' all so young and smart in their uniforms and pics of my grandad in his sailors uniform, he wouldn't talk about the war as he said it was not something he wanted to remember:( I have my great grandmothers piano which was hidden under the stairs during the war and then dragged out into the street at the end of the war for a sing song:D
 
I was brought up in Coldstream and rode 'the common riding' every year as child, it is most def still going :)

I remember being very proud of my rosette which was almost as big as I was (you added the Coldstreamers colours every year :) ), we also got special medals/ribbons for the Flodden Ride :)

eta: Fab pictures!
 
Alec Swan said:
Don't apologise, wonderful pics and history too.

What's the history behind, and the point to the Border Rides?

Alec.
Click to expand...

They each have their own histories Alec, but the original aim was a boundary ride to check the parish boundaries (as you know the borders was pretty much a no-mans land for a few hundred years and populated mainly by criminals :p). They have a secondary purpose of remembering all the townsfolk who have been lost in battle.

Some are really traditional - my local ride (Selkirk) is led by someone carrying a replica flag of one that was stolen from the English army at the Battle of Flodden field and returned to the town by the only surviving townsman. It has been running since the 16th century and is one of the biggest - 300/400 horses! Others, like the Duns one, are more modern. There are lots of customs which go along with the rides, each town has its own 'colours' which the riders wear, and for the local children, common riding is just about as exciting as Christmas! :D
 
Great pictures, lovely to hear some history too, bet he'll love seeing his name on the www! :)

My grandad also didn't like talking abuot the war, he was a devon farm labourer, and the one story I know was when they found some cows and milked them to get milk and clotted cream. The next day they went back and all the cows were dead, which for a bunch of farm boys was awful :(
 
Glad you enjoyed the pictures. Thank for the information Rhino, I really don't know that much about my Scottish heritage. I should really grill my grandparents some more!

I love hearing about how people in the countryside experienced the war, the land girls and such. Being city folk my English family had quite a different experience. My Scottish family were in service in a 'big house' in the Scottish Borders, I'm not sure which one however, so they weren't evacuated or anything, I think life carried on fairly normally for them.

Any other war stories? I love hearing them!

x
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Top