Bucks Free Press Nostalgia - Can you help with these images?

When cataloguing the photos and building the website we have tried to describe the content of the images as accurately and fully as possible.

However that has not always been possible.

So I thought that I would use this in the first Nostalgia column of 2024 to ask for your help.

Here are three images from SWOP where the description is inadequate, posing more questions than answers.

If you can provide more information about any of them please email me at deweymiked@aol.com or phone 01628 525207. I look forward to hearing from you.

Image one (Image: SWOP)

Here we see about 150 men and women who in 1943 are assembled for the photo, being the factory and office workers of a company called Hepplethwaites.

The picture appeared as No.1180 in the Those Were The Days series of the Midweek edition on January 26 1993, with the accompanying caption: “British fighter aces were aided in their triumph against the German Luftwaffe in the Battle of Britain by these workers from around the High Wycombe area.

They were all employees at the Hepplethwaite’s aircraft-parts factory in Lane End Road, Sands, where the Plumb Centre now stands.

The year was 1943, and their lives were overcast by the clouds of the war’s darkest days.

It must have been an anxious time for many of them who had brothers, husbands, fathers and sons at the front.

But they could all feel proud of their contributions in the final victory.”

This description raises one important point - what precisely were the ‘aircraft-parts’ produced by this firm that were so essential to the planes flown by the ‘British Can you help with these images? fighter aces’.

Image two (Image: SWOP)As you will know High Wycombe was once a furniture town, and known as the (wooden) chair-making capital of the UK, and even the world; and that was the case when this photo was taken in June 1952.

It shows a three-piece suite with upholstery partially removed to reveal framing made from packing cases.

This may be an early example of materials being recycled, or perhaps the examination of a competitor’s (inferior) product.

Image three (Image: SWOP)This picture taken by photographer Ronald Goodearl on June 6 1958 is of a ‘Harmonica Orchestra’.

This is composed of eleven older children, supplemented by two recorder players, and their teacher; but nothing more is known about the group or where the photo was taken.