Normally I believe the captions in Margaret Green's book
Around Sheldon but there is a picture on page 18 that I would question the caption.
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First of all I don't think it was taken in 1985. Sometime around 1962-64, if my memory is correct, there was an 'Oddities' exhibition and the bier was one of the items on display. I don't think the event was ever repeated, (I might be wrong), so why would the bier be put on display for any other event? The caption also says that the 'present' whereabouts was unknown. That surprises me as a brick bier house was built behind St. Giles specifically to house it by Rev. Strickland and others. Does anyone know if that structure still exists and/or where the bier is? [The bier is a hand cart for moving coffins from the lytch gate to the church]. (I could be persuaded that it is my brother looking out of the church hall).
Here is my sister wearing her grandmother's wedding dress at the front door of the church hall as part of the 'Oddities' show, (the bier is clearly at the back door of the hall). My family also provided a wooden model examination piece of pulpit stairs and a scout master's warrant (signed by Baden-Powell) belonging to my grandfather. Ex-Mapledene pupil, Margaret Newton, lent some of her Japanese(?) dolls in a glass case that her globe-trotting brother bought for her, (she brought them into school circa. 1957). Does anyone else remember this show?
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