# Polska Cottage - Jan '16



## UrbanX (Jan 19, 2016)

Just a flying visit here, nothing epic. Only history was that the guy was Polish, possibly lived with his daughter, and spent time in the military, oh, and enjoyed photography. The house was an absolute tip. Every room was like this: 




So the rest of the shots are all dirty, handheld, at ISO 3200! 














































Oh and there was a car that may have been on the drive for a while! 




I'll leave you with the curtains... proper shockers!


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## tazong (Jan 19, 2016)

really nice pics fella


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## jsp77 (Jan 19, 2016)

That's an interesting pair of curtains, excellent photos, cheers


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## Senseoffreedom (Jan 19, 2016)

Great pictures! Do you know what the car is?


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## Mikeymutt (Jan 19, 2016)

You got some great shots here mate..it's a bit too crowded for wide shots.mainly close ups for in here I think


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## UrbanX (Jan 19, 2016)

Senseoffreedom said:


> Great pictures! Do you know what the car is?



I'm gonna take a punt at a Rover Vitesse? 









Mikeymutt said:


> You got some great shots here mate..it's a bit too crowded for wide shots.mainly close ups for in here I think


Deffo! I couldn't even be bothered with a tripod! These are all ISO 3200 @ F1.8! lol.


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## J_a_t_33 (Jan 20, 2016)

Deffo an old Rover Vitesse.

Amazing shots man, as always! Must show my Polski girlfriend this one!


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## flyboys90 (Jan 20, 2016)

Great set of images and a couple of nice radios here.


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## smiler (Jan 20, 2016)

It does look a bit cluttered X, lovely pics through, Thanks


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## Senseoffreedom (Jan 20, 2016)

Ah yea looks like it! I couldn't recongise the shape, you dont see many of them about.


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## BikinGlynn (Jan 20, 2016)

Yeah its an sd1, but is it the V8 though?


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## Rubex (Jan 20, 2016)

Excellent stuff UrbanX


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## Brewtal (Jan 20, 2016)

Great shots mate! Messy place but you got some good ones there, loved the old whisky bottles!


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## H.Darby (Jan 21, 2016)

Another fantastic report, the radios really show the age and class of the place, not many people could afford radios back then, and the hoards of stuff in there, God only knows what you could find within the wreckage, awesome curtain, thanks for sharing,


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## uklimey1234 (Jan 21, 2016)

Wonderful pics. As a bit of background over 200,000 Poles settled in England at the end of the WW2 a lot of them ending up in the North of England. When I were a lad in the late 1960's I worked with quite a few. Mostly they were ex soldiers who had escaped both the Germans and Russians in order to join the British Armed forces. By 1945 there were over 220,000 Poles in the British Army, Navy and Air Force. Most stayed on rather than go back to a Russian occupied country.


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## HughieD (Jan 21, 2016)

Beautifully captured sir...


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## Dirus_Strictus (Jan 21, 2016)

H.Darby said:


> the radios really show the age and class of the place, not many people could afford radios back then,



Sorry, but you are very wrong there - I grew up in a rather poor area and money was very tight all round the area. However 90% of the households had radios, it was how they got through the war years. If you could not buy - outright or on tick, your Dad rented a set from the local radio shop (but soon to become radio and TV shop1) Now TV's were another matter and were horrendously expensive - my families first TV was an old set that Dad's DIY friend had got working on the only channel (BBC) and then screwed on the side an ITV converter box to give two channels on the flickering 12" screen. It was only when rented sets became more affordable that a more modern set appeared in the flat. And yes Mum and Dad's first colour set came via the same DIY friend!

The Sobell transistor was just one of the many makes that flooded the market at that time, cheap and cheerful and full of static - ours was a white Ferguson with a circular tuning dial on the top half of the front. Trouble was the carbon - zinc batteries of the day were crap and would rather leak out as soon as fitted, than power the damn thing.

For uklimey1234's information, this dear chap was too old for military service in British Forces and from the details that Rubex and I managed to put together, any military service was probably done in Poland well before WW2 and he worked for the war effort in a civilian capacity when in UK. The large black 'military' box or trunk certainly did not belong to this chap - name and service details do not tally. People who were born in countries that became Russian occupied territory and escaped to Britain as the Nazis invaded to continue the fight, had no real choice to return to their Russian occupied homeland - they all ran the risk of prison, years in a gulag or even death if they did. The Communists could not bear the thought of experience of Western ideas and freedoms being brought back by these brave people. I grew up in an area where many of these Polish families lived, you leant a lot about what real misery and loss meant from these ever cheerful families!


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## night crawler (Jan 22, 2016)

Brilliant post, unbelievable how the place is let alone that old rover becoming so overgrown with brambles


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## Dirus_Strictus (Jan 22, 2016)

night crawler said:


> Brilliant post, unbelievable how the place is let alone



I am personally very glad that this place has been left alone so the historical facts can still be researched from the images seen here.


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## uklimey1234 (Jan 24, 2016)

Dirus_Strictus said:


> For uklimey1234's information, this dear chap was too old for military service in British Forces and from the details that Rubex and I managed to put together, any military service was probably done in Poland well before WW2 and he worked for the war effort in a civilian capacity when in UK. The large black 'military' box or trunk certainly did not belong to this chap - name and service details do not tally. People who were born in countries that became Russian occupied territory and escaped to Britain as the Nazis invaded to continue the fight, had no real choice to return to their Russian occupied homeland - they all ran the risk of prison, years in a gulag or even death if they did. The Communists could not bear the thought of experience of Western ideas and freedoms being brought back by these brave people. I grew up in an area where many of these Polish families lived, you leant a lot about what real misery and loss meant from these ever cheerful families!



He must have been an old man indeed. The two Poles I worked with in the early 1970's would have been around 95 if they were still alive. They were both soldiers in the Polish Army and later served with the British Army in Europe,


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## Dirus_Strictus (Jan 25, 2016)

uklimey1234 said:


> He must have been an old man indeed. The two Poles I worked with in the early 1970's would have been around 95 if they were still alive. They were both soldiers in the Polish Army and later served with the British Army in Europe,



This chap was around 43 years old when he came to UK at beginning of the war.


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