Above is the photo of Saintfield taken in 1910 and the description on the website I took the extract and photo from reads :
The building on the left at the corner is Minnis Bros. Ltd. Beside it is Alexander Batton's grocer's shop.
The photo below was taken by my daughter Gillian during her trip to Belfast to visit her boyfriend Paul. She arrived home today and she has been there for the past 2 weeks. Whilst she was there she phoned me to say she was passing through Saintfield and she had stopped to take photos of the 1st Saintfield Presbyterian Church for me, as she knew this was the connection to the Battons I had been researching. Her boyfriend lives in the small town of Shrigley which is only about 10 miles from Saintfield.
I was just downloading all the photos from her trip onto my computer as she had visited the Falls Road and Shankhill areas and I wanted to look at the photos.
Imagine my shock when I came across the photos above!!!
It is taken almost in the same spot as the photo I had seen on the Saintfield website.
I asked her why she had taken this photo and she said it was for a joke as she is always spotting yellow cars and she did it to annoy her boyfriend! She said "I've just taken a photo of a yellow car"...
We were told that there is no connection between Alexander Batton who had the shop in Saintfield in 1910 and our Batton ancestors. Ian and Doreen Paterson received a letter from Gladys Batton, grand-daughter of Alexander and she insists there was no connection.
I was further surprised when I zoomed into Gillian's photo to see what the old Batton shop is now! And almost fell off my chair when I saw that it was Massey's of Saintfield (butchers shop).
Since our ancestor George Batton who died in 1872 in Galston, Ayrshire and we know lived in this same town in 1863.... he was the widower of Eliza Massey. The Massey and Batton connection again in a shop!
I received an email some time ago from Massey's of Saintfield giving me the contact number for a gentleman named Sidney Massey who had once been the owner of the butchers shop. I need to try and find it and try to find out how long the Massey family had owned the shop. Did it go from Batton to Massey - and were they related to us!
