25 September 2008

Tryphena Joan Shaw (1922–90)

The internet can amaze at times: take for instance this link to this photo, which is part of a post in The Serendipity Project here:

OK, it's a woman in front of Oliver Cromwell's house in Ely, Cambridgeshire: what's so strange about that? Only that it's my mother, Tryphena Joan Shaw (née Pembleton) and the photo appears to have come from nowhere. There aren't any missing spaces in my photo album, but here's a similar shot (also taken by my father Jim Shaw (1918–99), who also wrote the caption to the photo below) in front of Kings College Chapel, Cambridge, Cambridgeshire: she's wearing the same dress, shoes, and bracelet, so it was presumably taken during the same holiday. Very odd. Fascinating, though.

My grandmother was born Ellen Seymore* Alcock (1893-1982), in Richmond Barracks, Inchicore, Dublin, and married Herbert Noah Pembleton, a postman, in 1914.

This is the house where my mother was born: 40 Rydal Grove, Old Basford, Nottingham. I only discovered that recently, when making my application fo Irish citizenship by descent, my maternal grandmother having been born both British and Irish. My mother didn't even realise that she herself was in effect an Irish citizen as well as a British one.

*This second first name conflicts with the homophone 'Seymour' written on her marriage and her death certificate.

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