My own obsession
is military camps in Wiltshire. Two years ago, I paid £50 for several letters written by
a humble airman in 1917 and £60 for an used address label from a gas warfare station - the sort of things that most people would
have chucked away at the time. Apparently
even more of a zealot is the man convinced that Sir Arthur Conan Doyle murdered someone in
Devon ninety years ago. Recently he appealed in the local newspaper for any telegrams of
the period that might have been kept and would confirm part of his theory!
 I still have some Box Brownie snaps of my childhood home
and school, which were demolished in the 1960s and the sites redeveloped. I frequently
revisit the area and occasionally pass by both spots. I almost make a point of being
conspicuous in the hope that someone will wonder what I’m up to and will be
interested in learning what once stood where their home now is, and perhaps want to see my
photographs - not that I actually take them with me,
you understand! Seriously though, what happened in my childhood is now history, and relics
of the period are much sought after, whether they be illustrations, Dinky toys, model
trains or books about BiggIes or by Enid Blyton.
The problem is finding a good home
for unwanted material, though I once was too lucky. Five years ago, after ill-health
forced me to give up cycling, I took all my equipment to a cycle-jumble sale, along with
many years’ accumulation of magazines, a dozen books, and some personal photo albums
of the 1960s and 1970s to add interest to my wares. The standholder next to me happened to
be one of the very few people who deals in such material, and he took everything.
I said goodbye to the albums with
particular regret,
though at least they went to a good home, far better than being thrown into a skip by
someone clearing up my belongings after I die. I shudder at how much of value has been
thrown away by an unsuspecting relative or “house clearance specialist”. Horror
tales abound - such as of a professional
photographer’s glass plates of the 1900s being thrown away, and of sheets of valuable
stamps being burned. My own parents destroyed two large albums of family memorabilia
relating to Edwardian mansion-house life in Northern Ireland because they regarded them as
private.
Today the internet (notably the website www.ebay.co.uk ) is one way of tracking down private
collectors, dealers and auction houses who handle virtually any kind of collectable. Your
local museum may be happy to accept, or recommend a home for, letters, scrapbooks and old
photo albums.
 The trouble is that the sort of dealer who takes a range
of collectables — books, records, photo albums, toys, a
lifetime’s souvenirs - is unlikely to offer a good price for
them, and tracking down specialist traders takes time, though you may be lucky and find
several in one town or even under one roof. But the executors of the estate of a former
pub landlady at Buckfastleigh in Devon had no such problems. She had left the interior
unchanged for thirty years after the pub closed in the 1960s; now the building and its
contents are open to the public as a “time-capsule” of the period.
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