The 50s weren't that long ago!

PERHAPS the person who wrote the text alongside last week's Nostalgia picture is very young? (Crow March 5). He therefore sees the late 1940s or early 1950s as being very ancient!

I am sure, therefore, there will be many of your readers incensed to have it thought that is how we dressed in those days!

In 1947 when I came to Royston, little boys did not wear knickerbockers and 'bonnet' type caps!

Nor did the gentlemen wear similar caps or straw boaters. Nor did women wear cloche hats, straw hats, and clothes of the type worn by those in the photograph!

Indeed, by the mid 50s girls were wearing circular skirts over cancan petticoats and doing rock 'n roll, at the town hall!

No, I think you'll find this is more likely to be during the 1920s - I have plenty of photographs of my grandmother (born and raised in Royston) wearing those kinds of clothes and they are written up in the photo album as being in the 1920s.

Perhaps it was a Wild West Show coming to Royston, hence the Stetson being worn by the horse rider and the 'western type' toppers and bonnets by the passengers? They also appear to be gathering money from the crowd!

Of course, it could have been a special 20s parade and all the onlookers had been asked to wear appropriate costumes - but I strongly doubt that was the case!!

It must be pretty early in the century, because the Post Office seems misplaced! In 1947 there was a Crown Post Office where the nightclub now operates. And on the other side of Lower King Street, and going round the corner into the High Street, was Beales Bakery and traffic was two way, up and down the High Street straight down from London Road!

As I cannot see the High Street, Lower King Street or Kneesworth Street in the photograph, I have to assume the photographer must have been standing approximately at The Cross itself?

Judith C Brown

Layston Park

Royston

Note: We were only going on the information given to us by the gentleman who supplied the photograph. No offence meant!