Old curiosity shop girl was watching out for weddings

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They say a picture can speak a thousand words. However, back in the early 1960s, when an Evening Telegraph photographer politely asked Val Bottomer, then aged around eight, if he could take a picture of her, sitting on the step outside an old curiosity shop, she had no idea that the image would follow her throughout her life. Lynne Brighouse spoke to Val about her life and her memories of the era which is captured in the wonderfully atmospheric scene below.

Over the years Val Bottomer has found herself popping up in a variety of arenas – as an educational tool to help pupils with their history lessons, as a calendar girl – Miss November – and in the Telegraph Bygones’ pages, at various times, to illustrate a range of stories about the past. And it’s all because of one picture!

“I have noticed that my photograph has been published in Bygones several times over the years – often with an appeal for the identity of the child sitting reading – so I thought it was time I came forward and revealed who I am,” laughed Val.

“I remember very well the photograph being taken. It was outside an old curiosity shop in St Alkmund’s Square, in Derby, and I must have been about eight at the time.”

It wasn’t unusual for Val to be seen around the square on a Saturday afternoon.

“My parents had recently separated so I was living with my great-grandmother, Eliza Callendine, in Handyside Street, while things got sorted out at home,” she said.

“My brother Harold, who can also be spotted in the photograph, reflected in the mirror, was living next door to me with our grandmother, Eliza Dukes.

“Every Saturday afternoon, we would be sent down to St Alkmund’s Square to buy provisions from a little store which we knew as Jessie’s shop.

“I never minded, though, because I loved being in that square. It was a paved area surrounded by attractive Georgian houses and, once the errands were finished, I would often hang around there waiting for wedding parties to emerge from the nearby churches, St Mary’s and St Alkmund’s.

“The brides always looked really beautiful and I liked to see what all the guests were wearing, too.”

It was on one such afternoon, Val recalled, that a photographer from the Evening Telegraph asked her and her brother if they would be willing to appear in a photograph he was taking of the old curiosity shop in the square.

“I think he was waiting for the bride and groom to appear too,” said Val. “I expect he had to photograph the wedding for the newspaper and just thought that the shop would make an interesting shot.

“He spoke with our grandmother to ask for permission to photograph us and that was that.

“It wasn’t until many years later that I first saw the picture, printed in the Telegraph’s Bygones section.”

As it happened, Val’s father, Victor Dukes, used to work as a van driver for the Evening Telegraph and it was he who first brought the picture to her attention.

Since then, Val has made two or three appearances, when the image has been used to illustrate stories in the paper.

She also became Miss November in a Bygones calendar produced in the year 2000 and her picture has been used to teach local pupils about the history of certain areas of Derby and the items which were on sale outside the shop.

Despite her keen interest in weddings at the time the photograph was taken, Val’s career took her in a slightly different direction. Initially, she worked for Bird’s bakery, where her duties included icing wedding cakes but, eventually, she became a lithographer at Royal Crown Derby and now works as a co-ordinator for the Crown Derby Collectors’ Guild.

“I had no idea that photograph outside the old curiosity shop would create so much interest, although, I must admit, I do enjoy seeing it still,” said Val.

“It is a very atmospheric image which, I imagine, is the appeal for other people and also why it still shows up in unexpected places from time to time. For me personally, though, it reminds me of a very special time in my life.

“That attractive square has disappeared now. There are only a few weeping willow trees left, which is sad because it had such a lovely tranquil quality to it which, even as a child, I appreciated. It was a place which invited you to sit and muse away a few hours...and dream.”

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The 'Stories Behind The Pictures'

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