I have always been drawn to and fascinated by old photographs, and when I come across something unusual I cannot stop studying them and thinking of that moment in time captured forever.

I recall once when Mary Forsyth, who helped with the research of photographs for our decade supplements, came in with a photograph of Cassiobury Estate, taken from the air.

The estate was in its infancy but the roads were laid out and you could clearly see Cassiobury Drive, Parkside Drive, Woodlands Drive and The Gardens. There were a handful of houses dotted along them, perhaps 25 in all.

It had a personal appeal to me because my parents had moved from Chipperfield to The Gardens, Watford, in 1956, probably 30 years after the photograph had been taken.

At the back of our garden was a large Scots pine that had been topped. Although the photograph was taken before houses were built in The Gardens, the Scots Pine is clearly there, un-topped on what would be the family home.

But the magic of the photograph for me was captured in the foreground, just behind where The Gardens/Essex House tennis clubs were erected. It is still there, Gulliver among the lesser houses: Cassiobury House awaiting its fate.

So, on the template of today’s Cassiobury Estate, we can pinpoint exactly where the majestic Cassiobury House stood, before the ground fell away to what was subsequently Richmond Drive and lower Parkside Drive.

A few years later, I drove over to Kings Langley to interview a lady whose father, Christopher Cox, had won the VC.

We talked about the local, much-celebrated hero and she then showed me a photograph of him arriving home; greeting his waiting wife, with the Earl of Clarendon standing by. Instead of going home, I almost flew back to the office and negotiated the rush-hour traffic, in order to show colleagues my find.

Both the photographs were used in Volume 1 of the Watford in the 20th Century series of books, each of which contained considerably more than the original decade supplements we had given away free with the paper.

There were many more photographic delights unearthed, most of them redolent with the atmosphere of the era.

The other day, I was told the former station, now a meeting hall, near our house in St Amans-Soult in the Tarn, France, was host to an exhibition of photographs. The exhibition had taken two years to put together and featured the old village cum small town, which even boasted a cinema in far-off days.

When we arrived, looking for someone to pay for the admission, we were informed it was free, whereupon our neighbours, Claude and Marie-Jean, descended upon us.

They are extremely helpful and friendly but do not speak a word of English, and tend to lapse into patois. The pronunciation is somewhat different from that which we experienced in Limousin, where we lived for seven years.

For example the French for butter is beurre and we are familiar with the word from schooldays. However, when Claude gets hold of the word it become buer-ra.

I may have related the anecdote where I went across the road to the baker’s and asked for “une flute” of bread and the girl nodded and said “una fluta” – almost a Spanish approach.

We were taken on a tour of the exhibition with every photo explained and the relationship of the people in street scenes, spelt out. It was hard work for me, keeping up with the French but rewarding nevertheless.

At the end, we were introduced to the man who had put the exhibition together. I congratulated him because I know how much work goes into projects such as this.

Also, I thanked him for he had offered, without charge, to email me copies of two photographs, taken from opposite vantage points in the main street.

In one, our current house is shown on the left, beyond our large garage, which now comfortably houses our motor-home, a trailer and a car. At the turn of the last century, around 1903, it housed the pony or horse that pulled the carriage, which we could see outside the house in the photograph.

Apparently, a doctor owned the house in those days and he would go out on his rounds in the horse and carriage.

The second photograph would appear to be slightly older, stretching back as far as the 1880s, as there are dated photographs of buildings further up the street, which appeared in the same exhibition.

The group of people make the picture, but our house is on the right with foliage. Long since cut down, reaching up to the third floor.

We do not know exactly who owned it subsequently. It was unoccupied for 40 years or more and also acted as an office for a solicitor, who enjoyed the irony that he undertook the conveyancing when we bought the property in late 2011.

After years of neglect, the house was purchased by a roofer from Banbury, who transformed the property into a summer home, undertaking re-plastering throughout, and brought the house up to modern specifications with rewiring and plumbing.

The house looks imposing, as befits a property boasting 240 square yards of habitable area. It is a big house, completely renovated and we have no embarrassment, only pleasure, in admitting it cost us £103,000.

The price of French property was one of the attractions: that and being able to augment our pension with the money from our sale in the UK.

We are very settled and happy here. We are also rather pleased because in our kitchen-diner-living-room, the biggest room in the house, there hangs on the wall, postcard-sized prints of our property – photographs taken 112 and over 125 years ago. It provides a feeling of continuity.