The boy in this photo, taken at Northam, Devon, about 1915, is my grandfather  Lawrance Wilfred Gibbins ; behind him is his mother Helen Mary with her daughter Monica, and in the middle is Helen's grandfather Captain  Thomas Edward Gordon , with two of his daughters and a niece on the right. Like his father James before him Thomas had retired to England, leaving management of Clifton Station in New Zealand to his sons, and he lived for many years in a large house called Porthill in Northam and then at Cluden Bank (where this photo was taken) near 'Westward Ho' where he was able to indulge in his passion for golf. Because I knew my grandfather very well - he died in 1986, when I was 23 - and he remembered these visits to his great-grandfather, this picture bridges the generations for me back to the time of Thomas' birth in Benares in 1828 when India was still ruled by the East India Company.