Eastcombe WI: A nostalgic trip down memory lane with photographer Annie Blick

WE GATHERED for a nostalgic trip down memory lane with photographer Annie Blick.

Annie told us how photography makes friends as she showed us black and white images of a bygone era.

We saw how her erstwhile employer, Peckhams, is now the site for Travail and World Foods, at 10 Russell Street.

However, there were much older photos to fascinate us.

Chalford donkeys from 1935, the wartime bread queue along George St and crowds dancing in front of Woolworths on VE day were interspersed with shots of Stonehouse, Brimscombe, Minchinhampton and the Ram Inn in Bussage.

The buildings where Laurie Lee was born, drunk and died were enshrined in a single snap, and the last steam train to come out of Stroud in the 1960s was captured.

It seemed there were more controversial shots – could the strange plant, immortalised in monochrome, be a 19th Century cannabis?

And the woody shape on Selsley Common – the Five valleys’ own Wicker Man, by any chance?

On December 31, 2008, Peckham’s closed, leaving this enduring legacy of negatives of local scenes.

But the evening did not end on a melancholy note.

Annie’s stunning, shots of Frith Wood and the Common brought us up to date in a blaze of colour, showing us just how creative photography can be.