Family Memories - with Fay Hampson

Father’s school days in Wrexham...

My father, Jeff Hampson, was born and brought up in Wrexham, the younger son of Master Baker and Confectioner, Herbert Hampson of Charles Street bakery.

These photos show a couple of the activities he got up to in school. In the photo of him with his classmates at the National School, there he is being a good boy, fourth from the left in the back row in 1928.

I don’t know whether he was a good boy with the violin, here he is in the same year, second from the right in the front row.

By 1930 he was at Grove Park School, third row up and second from the left, and I do know that at Grove Park he was an accomplished actor.

The whole cast photograph of Shakespeare’s Twelfth Night was taken in 1933 and dad is in the front row fourth from the right.

We have also found a newspaper cutting of it among the family papers.

The cutting was sent to the Leader in September 1985 by Lady Rosier and the review states that the production was “admirable both in regard to clear speaking and stage presentation” adding that all the female parts were played by Grove Park boys.

A year later Grove Park boys were doing another Shakespeare play, this time As You Like It.

My father played Orlando. Here he is with Rosalind, who is perched on a convenient tree trunk.

Both these plays were, I believe, staged at Acton Park Open Air Theatre.

I presume Rosalind is also played by a boy, just as she would have been in Shakespeare’s day.

We have a boy playing a girl playing a boy - so Shakespeare, and so modern!