A look back on a family life
Aug 14 2009 The Journal
Environment editor Tony Henderson on a homecoming in the Cheviot Hills.
FOR 12 years Elizabeth Ellen Dunn walked the wild Cheviot Hill country of Northumberland as a post girl.
She continued until her marriage in 1927, at the age of 29, to Henry Trotter, who was three years younger and had also attended school in the Cheviot village of Kirknewton.
Now the village hall is the home of an exhibition that centres on Elizabeth and her family. It’s called Our Very Own Laura, after the post girl character Laura Timmins in Flora Thompson’s Lark Rise to Candleford books, which became a successful TV series.
The exhibition is based on a remarkable family collection which came to light through a chance encounter.
It saw retired teacher Dorothy Sharpe, who lives in Kilham, near Kirknewton, approached by a man who asked if he could take a photograph of her former railway cottage.
“He thought his father had been born in the cottage. In fact, it was the next cottage, but we got talking,” said Dorothy.
At the time she was researching for a book on the history of the 18th century Kirknewton school, which later became the village hall and had eventually been demolished in 1999.
It turned out the man’s mother, Christine Trotter, who lives at West Byfleet in Surrey, had family connections with Kirknewton.
Thinking she might be able to contribute to the book, Dorothy contacted Christine and discovered she had an archive of photographs and an array of items from Elizabeth Ellen’s family.
