Frances's Story

“Until I saw the restored version of the other photograph”, Frances says, “I hadn’t realised that my whole family is in that picture: Dad, my two brothers, my two sisters - but also my mum! She was holding the camera; but I can now see her shadow filling the foreground of the image!”

In fact, Frances has just one photograph of her with her mother. Seated together on a rug, they inhabit the corner of a tiny print just 8 cm wide, themselves barely the width of a thumb. The only pictures Frances has of her parents and siblings when they were children are a handful of small, fading family snaps.

“We didn’t have time for photographs”, Frances says. “Before the war, my parents ran the local store together. But at the outbreak, Dad was told he had to work nights at the factory [Heenan Froude, which was manufacturing precision aircraft parts]. So, Mum had the shop to run, and all of us to look after. I was on a bus recently and watched a lady get on with 3 little children, and I thought back to my mother and what it must have been like for her with five of us under 8.”

As a Christmas gift, Frances decided to give her siblings framed copies of the family pictures in her possession. She had seen an advertisement for Restoring Glory photograph restoration, and hoped that the photographs could be improved a little, and enlarged to fit 18 by 13 cm frames.

The pictures were indeed restored and enlarged, and her brother and sisters were delighted with their presents.

Frances herself, though, was speechless when she saw the restored photograph of her mother, the only picture she has of them together. What had for over 70 years been a dark corner of a small, fading photograph is now a glorious 18 by 13 cm in size and beautifully clear.

If you have a treasured old photograph, contact Restoring Glory today to start out on your own amazing journey.