Tollesbury Old and Tollesbury New - from unknown publication about 1973.

Sixty-five years ago young Ivy Osborne and her faithful dog Dash, were stopped in Tollesbury High Street to pose for the picture above by an unknown photographer.

As another Osborne bus waited in the village square to start its journey we asked Miss Osborne to stand in an identical spot near the Hope for a 1973 version of the 1908 picture (bottom). Dash is dead now, flags no longer fly above the The Hope or the King's Head (The Hope, anyway has been rebuilt and the cottages before it have disappeared) and there's considerably more traffic about today than there was in 1908.

But despite Tollesbury's changing face we can report that Miss Osborne is alive and well and still living in the mid-Essex village. She collects bus fares daily for brothers Joe and Gilbert, who run the locally famous bus and coach company.

Miss Osborne will be 74 in April. But she's not hanging up her ticket machine - not just yet, anyway.

"Not while I can keep going," she says. "It gets me out of the house. I like to help while I can."

As another
Date: c1973