Nostalgia: Were you at Piper’s Hill military hospital?

Jane’s late father, Jonathan, or ‘Jock’ Weir, was a member of the Royal Warwickshire Regiment and it seems it was his job to maintain discipline among the soldiers who were recuperating.

Jock lodged in Banbury Road, Lighthorne, with a Mrs Humphries and lived in the area for many years.

When he died, in 2000, just before his 99th birthday, Jane found a number of photographs amongst his belongings that she’d never seen before.

To her amazement some of the snaps turned out to be of half-brothers and sisters she knew nothing about.

But the photographs shown here are not the children she has already discovered, but others close to her father, who may still be related to her.

Jane says: “I don’t know that much about my father’s early life other than the fact that before he transferred to the Royal Warwicks he was in the Argyll and Sutherland Highlanders.

“I have been back to meet the current owners of the house at Piper’s Hill who are charming but they didn’t live there during the war when it was owned by Daphne Lakin, who remembered my father.

“Even so, Daphne wasn’t able to tell me much more and so for the past five years I’ve since then been trying to trace others who worked at the hospital, including a Freda Evans who came from Bishops Itchington and featured on the BBC’s People’s War website.

Some local historians suggest stylish Piper’s Hill might have once been the home of the owners of Southam Cement Works.

Jane’s research so far has uncovered the fact that just before the war her dad became friends with a Australian nanny called Dorothy Verrall and it could be the pictures are of children she was looking after.

Her confusion about trying to piece together missing parts of her family tree led Jane to write a book, entitled Patchwork, which was published in 2009.

Anyone who is able to help, or has memories of life at Piper’s Hill during its days as a military hospital, is asked to contact [email protected]