Thursday 16th May
Peter came to the hotel at 8.30 once he had dropped Sasha at school
It is still raining but we still have our brollies
First in a cab to find the church where Granny and Grandpa got married. It has a school attached to it so we could not go in but we will go back on Saturday and can go in then.
Then to see some wonderful buildings that were there in Grandpas time. There is some preservation of buildings and their architectural features and Peter seems to know them all. He even showed us the last manhole cover with the stamp of the Shanghai Municipal Council on it!!! Of course Grandpa worked for the SMC
Then to see the building that the SMC had built as its HQ
We were allowed to go in and it was very moving to know that Grandpa had been here before us. It is a lovely building on the inside and has marble and gilding and terrazzo floors. Terrazzo was very new at that time. There were wonderful pictures of the building through the years and also a floor plan which made Peter very pleased as he had not been able to go in before and is really interested in such things.
We saw the newspaper offices where Granny worked and then the Palace Hotel where Granny and Grandpa had their wedding reception and it is wonderful. It is no longer an
hotel but a space for art!! Wonderful chandeliers in red Murano glass and we saw the reception room that would have been used then.
Then the Peace Hotel which is fairly newly restored. Peter assisted on this project as he had plans and drawings from the original design.
Then to the rowing club where we had coffee and saw what had been the swimming pool which I assume dad and his siblings used. We had coffee there and sheltered for a while from the rain. (This had changed owners since Peter had been there last, new owners are Japanese we were told, it is decorated in an extraordinary way, closest description I can give is an explosion in a paint factory! Tony).
Finally we went in a cab to Columbia Road. Peter thought he knew where the house was and we wandered around the area which is really very nice.
There is a mystery about all this as Peter knew that Granny and Grandpa had lived in three different placed after they were married. There are many pictures of a house that I had always thought was in Columbia Road. Peters view is that it was too early a design to have been there and that it may have been one of the other addresses he had found. He very much doubts that it can have been in Columbia Road!
However when we were looking through the albums we borrowed from my cousin Cathy we found a picture of another house which has notes on the back that as far as I can recall are related to the garden there. There are children's toys in the garden that my Aunt Jane identified as hers
The house looks pebble dashed I think and there in Columbia Road was a very similar house. It is behind a tall fence and had electric gates but I am fairly sure that it is the one and so Peter rang the bell.
Sadly only the maid was home but I was even more sure that it was the house in the picture which I can't check till we get home.
I took some pics through the trees so we can see but I did feel that they could have lived in the quiet corner of Shanghai as Peter said that people built the houses so they were near the country but there were some security problems as it is well outside where the main concessionary areas were, also disputes over who policed the area and who collected the taxes.
Who knows?
A wonderful day out
In the evening I made a presentation to the RAS which I will tell you about later
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