A surprise blast from the past

Today,we took a trip, in wet miserable weather, to visit my son's family in Accrington, Lancashire. I was born and brought up in the town and moved away in the late 1980s. I don't always have time to wander round the town centre but, today, I spent a little time in the splendidly refurbished Victorian market hall. It was there I made an interesting discovery.

One of the former market stalls has been converted to a small museum with a selection of books, photos and assorted artifacts. To my surprise, I found a framed excerpt from a newspaper advert for a herbalist shop - not just any shop. This one was owned and run by my great-great-grandfather.

I have recently begun to explore my ancestry and knew about this chap. He was born in Bath in 1835 and successive census details show his development from 16 year old errand boy, a Tallow Chandler and then a warehouseman to a druggist. In the 1881 and 1891 censuses he is listed, at the address on the ad, as dentist, and 1901 Dental Surgeon. Clearly he was also a bit of an optician. I would estimate the advert was published in the local paper in the late 1880s or 1890s, since in another bit of the ad it mentions Thomas Robbins had been established for 27 years. I intend to track down the original later.

It was such a surprise, to find this rather inventive and entertaining piece of advertsing on the wall of a museum, that I asked to photograph it. I then discovered, a few feet away, a second framed advert for the same business, bearing a photograph of the man himself.

So today's blip is a little bit of my family history.