THESE wonderful pictures of a well-to-do family taking to the waters of Weymouth Bay and frolicking on the sands were sent in by Helen Gardner.

She believes they were taken in the early 1920s and they show her mother, Daphne Paul, with her sisters Phyllis and Eileen with their mother and an aunt.

The family-owned Woodsford Farms near Dorchester and supplied potatoes to local shops. They were well off and the girls had nurses and governesses as they grew up.

As well as a series of happy family snaps, the pictures also show the family enjoying several of the attractions on the beach. The girls seemed to have enjoyed their ride in the goat-pulled cart, they joined the crowds watching the Punch and Judy show – which remains in the same place to this day – and bought ice creams from a seller on the Esplanade.

Helen said: “I think they were a well-off family because they had a nurse for the young children and a governess when they were older.

“They also had a camera, which not many people had in those days.

“My mother went on to become a nurse. She trained at Kings and met my father, who was in the army, abroad. She was the only one to move away – her other sisters stayed locally and Phyllis married a farmer.”

On a completely different subject, Helen wonders if anyone knows any of the history of the Mill Street in Broadwey. She is currently renovating the old mill in the street and turning it into a guesthouse and would love to know some of its past.

Anyone with information can contact her via these pages.