The photograph below shows thirteen ladies from Eastby, and probably also Embsay, at some sort of gathering. I think the photograph may have been taken in the garden at Bridge End Cottage, Eastby, in 1939/40, because the lady in the centre of the middle row is identified as Mrs Humphries, second wife and widow of Raleigh Humphries, who lived there, and she died in July 1940. 

I acquired a copy of the photograph from the granddaughter of Mrs Sarah Jane Wilson, who, with her husband Alfred Wilson, lived at the Heugh. The writing on the back of the photograph identifies four of the ladies: 

Back Row: 

1st left: Annie Whitaker (with cat), Mrs Wilson’s cousin; 

2nd left: Miss Shuttleworth; 

3rd left: Mrs Sarah Jane Wilson, of the Heugh, who died in 1954; 

Centre Row: 

Middle : Mrs Humphries, the second wife of Mrs Thomas’s Stepmother. 

I wonder if any of “Eastby’s Noble and Noteworthy Nonagenarians”, or anyone else, can help identify any of the ladies in the photograph?

 David Turner. Embsay-with-Eastby Historical Research Group