In the 1950s I went on a school trip to Armagh city. As usual I had my camera with me. Well, on this occasion it wasn't my camera. I had one on loan from cousin Ciaran. Mine was a bellows 116 camera and pretty conspicuous. His was a neat little 16mm which took two shots for every conventional 35mm frame, so you got over 60 shots per roll of film.
In August 2004 I put up a web page describing my trip. At that time I had free hosting from Tripod, but only 2MB for the whole site. So I optimised my pictures like mad, both in size and resolution. I ended the page with a general shot of the city from the Cathedral steps. It was even fainter than the version of it above, and you can clearly see from the blockiness of the sky how much it was optimised.
Anyway, there the matter rested until this morning (2012) I received an email out of the blue from a chap called Marc. He had come across my page and was particularly interested in this photo which he said showed his house. He wondered if the photos were my own and, if so, might I have a larger, better resolution, shot so that he could see how his house looked in the 1950s.
It was a long shot, in more ways than one. But I managed to come up with the negative and scanned it at a massive 2400ppi. You can see the result above and the house is clearly visible on the far side of the road, opposite the Cathedral gate. It is a listed building. It was built, towards the end of the nineteenth century, by an industrialist as his town house, and he also built the 31 houses behind it for his workers.
This (above) is what it looked like at full size. (Click on the image to see it at max.) Marc was thrilled and showed it to his mother who told him something he didn't know. There had originally been an iron railings outside the house, but this had been taken away and melted down during WWII. In the meantime a wooden fence had been put in its place and that remained there until about 1955. You can see the fence in my photo. So he learned something new and I got a better dating on my trip and photos.
I am always telling people, particularly those who are following up their family history, that they should have a presence, however minimal, on the web. That way people can find you and you never know what they might be bringing to the table.
So, thanks a lot Marc. It's been a busy morning.