Brandon Heritage

Category: Share your discoveries

  • TOWN STREET, circa 1920

    Do you recognise your ancestors in this map?  Or perhaps you share a surname of someone listed here? TOWN STREET 1. J. Austin 2. Harriet Dixon 3. Ernie Thompson 4. Jim Abigail 5. ‘Truget’ Dixon 6. ? Death 7. Frank Challis 8. Hannah Prior 9. Fred Pettitt 10. Primitive Methodist Chapel 11. Herbert Docking 12.…

  • PASSCHENDAELE 1917 – John Basham

    PASSCHENDAELE 1917 As we approach Remembrance Day, we bring you this article from John Basham, who has shared with us his research into Passchendaele, 1917 … There are few more evocative images of the first world war than those columns of weary, heavily laden men trudging in single file along a duckboard path through a…

  • Embroidered shield by Paulina Zelke

    So Anna McInnes visited the centre today and while she was talking about her parents she mentioned her mother spent many evenings embroidering a ‘shield’ for Breckland Middle School.  Anna’s mother, Paulina Zelke, helped out at the school and the embroidery project consumed much of her mother’s spare time.  Anna described the shield – an…

  • Polish Camp

    Today we had a visitor bring in two photo albums of their family from the 1940s and 50s, including time spent on the Army camp off London Road just after the Second World War.  Anna McInnes’ parents, Alfred and Paulina Zelke, met while Alfred was serving alongside the British Army in Italy.  Paulina was Slovenian…

  • Site visit to Omar mobile homes

    Omar site visit Before the Second World War Tom Green, set up a timber yard off London Road, with the business making anything from shoe heels to agricultural boxes.  Tom’s daughter, Janet Bowes, has many memories of growing up on the site, in fact she even lived there for a while – in a bungalow…

  • Polish 2nd Corps visit Brandon (1946)

    Polish Army disembark in Brandon, 1946 … Following the end of the Second World War there was a large settlement of Polish ex-servicemen into Brandon.  They have since been credited with restoring the weekly market in the years following the war and many created their own businesses which are still thriving today.  Today, generations later,…

  • Inside the old Drill Hall

    Victor Lukaniuk takes us inside the old Drill Hall, on the High Street … “One building that probably goes unnoticed in Brandon is 71, High Street – an architectural marvel it is not, but it does have a hidden secret. Most people know the building as the veterinary surgery and it has served the town…

  • Can you name these footballers?

    Brandon footballers, can you name any? John Basham has asked if we can get names to these men, so if you can help then please do let us know.  We have one or two names so far …      

  • What is this?

    Here’s a question.  How many times do you walk through town and not look at the buildings around you?  If you do look at them then have you seen this? John Basham spotted this and on our Facebook page he questioned what it might be, “Does anyone know what this is? Its taken from the…

  • Remains of Nissan huts found

    Thank you to Brandon resident Sylvia Steward for letting us know about these concrete steps she discovered while walking in the forest near Rowan Drive, which probably belonged to the old Nissan huts that formed the army camp on that site during WW2.  When the army left at the end of the war the huts then became home…