John Knowles - PLaces

Places
All of us store memories from childhood - some good some bad - and if we are lucky some magical times whose nostalgia almost bring us to tears.

For me one such time was an thirteen year period when my grandmother, Edith May Knowles lived at Watersmeet Cottage, Lymebridge, Hartland, North Devon.

The photograhs contained in the early galleries here are taken during the period from 1951 until 1963. They show repeated photographs of the cottage itself in its various stages of decoration and renovation and the ever-changing garden that provided a childhood paradise of flowers, vegetables and iimagined adventures. Childhood for me is largely made up of the holidays I spent here from the age of 7 until 18 when, following the death of my grandmother's partner John Henderson, she decided in a panic to leave and become a companion to Stevie Smith the poet and writer. A relationship that in the end failed and led to her final moves to Southgate and Highams Park, London.

That move from Lymebridge ended a period when Hartland was farthest from the railways and when electricity finally replaced the shadow-casting oil lamps that lit the way to bed at night in that old 16th century cottage and thus sealed the end of my childhood.

Later galleries provide further collections of photographs that are of personal significance.