A little girl on a beach

Meandering through my archive (a posh way of saying 'flicking through a pile') of sadly anonymous family photographs, I came across this one. Such images often ask a question or tell a story or inspire an emotion or reaction. In this case, I've got five unknown people on an unknown beach in an unknown year. So, lots of questions and very few answers. But it's interesting to see what information can be gleaned with a little speculation.

Who are they? I've got no idea. The lady on the right resembles my great aunts Daisy and Lily but isn't either of them. Maybe it's a group of relatives on my paternal grandmother's side of the family? Where was it taken? Probably on a beach on the south coast, somewhere in Sussex as this is where the family hailed from. When was it taken? From the style of the clothes, it could be the post-war years - the late 40s or early 50s.

The addition of some colour gives them a little life but still doesn't reveal anything more about them. I really can't decide on the relationships in the group. Were the women the mothers? To me they look too young for that but I could be wrong.

With an eye to the composition, if it were taken nowadays with a digital camera, it would probably have been cropped somewhat on the lines of the above. The focus would have been on the 'main' characters and any extraneous background taken out.

But doing that would mean losing the most, for me, intriguing part of the photograph - the small girl on the left towards the back. Why is she dressed so formally for a trip to the beach? Sunday best coat and hat. And what does she have in her little suitcase? She seems to be poised to go on a journey rather than for spending a day on the beach. But where? There is an alternative scenario: what if the photograph was taken earlier and the little girl was an evacuee from London? Unlikely perhaps, but that’s what old photographs allow you to do - indulge your imagination. After all, who can prove me wrong?