Grandad’s Garden

Grandad Broadhurst’s first garden was at a house called ‘Fanmar’ after Francis and Martha, the family matriarchs, in a little salt mining village of Moulton, in rural Cheshire. I don’t actually ever remember him gardening, he was a bus driver who enjoyed smoking and watching the wrestling on the weekend, but I do remember he kept budgies and other funny looking birds in the porch, a hang over from growing up around racing pigeons maybe.

I’m looking back through my little archive of family photos (3 shoe boxes) to find references to gardens and the outdoors of my upbringing, am I having a genuine memory or is it the photograph that you remember? No matter, it’s the feeling I’m seeking out, the materiality of the photograph, that deep connection to place, a person’s life, a lived experience carried through the bloodline like a shot in the arm.

Thomas Broadhurst, ‘Fanmar’, Moulton, Cheshire