When the good old Windmill closed its doors and its nonstop revue disappeared into the pages of exotic history, one of its youngest girls decided she wasn't going to queue up at the agencies to find similar work.
Not a bit of it. JILL MILLWARD decided on a complete change of occupation. Know what she is now? A children's nurse. Gad, those lucky children. Wonder if they realise how good life is to them?
Span No 167 - July 1968
Susanne Kent’s set from Span No 144 was most certainly shot on the intake to Mugdock Reservoir.
The set was taken in 1966, with the final picture showing the location much as it is now. The trees have grown a lot over the years, but it is quite obviously the same place.
Thanks goes to David for researching this.
The Kent sisters, Susanne and Madeline, did a photo shoot here in 1965. These pictures, though, never appeared in a magazine, as far as I am aware. Louise Crawford was also a regular visitor at the tennis club. The final picture of this set shows the clubhouse as it is now; still the original building with its distinctive double pitch roof. It is reasonably well overlooked, but I suppose you would have had to look quite hard to notice from a distance that the girls had shorts on with their stockings and suspenders on show.
Thanks again to David for his research.
Janet Neill was born in 1937 in Kilwinning, just a couple of miles northeast of Saltcoats. She married George Fleming on 30th March 1959 at Barony Church in Ardrossan, which was recently sold and is now being redeveloped. At the time of her marriage to George, Janet was living at 4 Galloway Place - a small, terraced house not far from the sea front in Saltcoats - and was working as a Dental Nurse. What’s interesting to note on her marriage certificate is that Sadie Milligan is one of her witnesses.
Sadie (Sarah) Milligan was born in 1938 in Ardrossan. She married Patrick McAteer on 4th August 1962, and was married at the same church as Janet in Ardrossan. At the time of her marriage, she was living at 3 Caledonia Road Ardrossan - though it looks to me like the original house is now gone. Her profession is shown as an Explosives Process Worker; there was a large explosive factory in Ardeer just south of Saltcoats.
I often wonder, as I put things together and look at the local area, how they met and became friends. Janet was on the scene much earlier than Sadie, first appearing in May 1956. Sadie’s first pictures were not seen until June 1958, some 2 years later. Sadie, of course, was roughly 2 years younger than Janet, but both girls would have been about 19 or 20 years old for their first photo shoots. It certainly does make you think who else might have worked at the Explosives Factory, as it was such a large local employer. Julie Scott appeared in a couple of two-girl sets with Sadie, so perhaps she worked at the Explosives Factory as well.
You can just image the talk that went on during breaks about showing your stockings and knickers to a local photographer for some extra cash! I wonder if they are both still with us; Janet would be about 83 now and just full of great stories to tell us all.
The pictures of Janet are taken from Span No 54 February 1959 - just a month before she was married; what a lucky man George Fleming was!
The pictures of Sadie are from Spick No 105 and Beautiful Britons No 82, both published in August 1962 - the same month that Sadie was married. Oddly, both sets are of her in Directoire Knickers and in magazines published in the summer; not sure what that was saying to Patrick, her new husband!
Both girls though went on to appear in ToCo publications after they were married, so it was presumably something that their husbands approved of.
From Wikipedia
The Ardeer peninsula was the site of a massive dynamite manufacturing plant built by Alfred Bernhard Nobel. Having scoured the country for a remote location to establish his explosive factory, Nobel finally acquired 100 acres from the Earl of Eglinton, and established the British Dynamite Factory in 1871, and went on to create what was described then as the largest explosives factory in the world. The factory had its own jetty on the River Garnock in Irvine Harbour serving ships disposing of time expired explosives or importing materials for the works.
At its peak, the site employed almost 13,000 workers in a fairly remote location and had its own railway station. The station was used solely for workers and those special visitors with business in the ICI plant, and was never a regular passenger stop. Until the mid-1960s, there were two trains per day to transport workers. Although the line no longer exists, the abandoned platform remains, hidden beneath dense undergrowth.
Many thanks to David for researching this.
Once a girl has been a nurse, she always retains some compassion for suffering humanity, so CAROLE-ANNE BLAKE is just the girl to hold your hand when you've got toothache. Carole-Anne used to be a dental nurse; you see.
She comes from the North of England and is now modelling in London. She keeps quiet about her dental nursing qualifications because she found that any new friend who got to know about her former job wanted her to look at his teeth. "You can see one molar too many when you're dining out," she said.
Spick No 189 - August 1969
All those majestic maples and all those gorgeous outdoor gals you can't wonder we all want to emigrate from the U.K. Look at LISA LINNETTE from Vancouver, for instance. Hold on, Bert, don't go without your hat - in fact, don't go at all-Lisa's paying a visit to Europe this year.
Span No 125 - January 1965
JAN KERRIE came to London from Ireland some months ago, thought she'd stay a few weeks to see how unspeakable the English were and then return.
That was six months ago.
Jan is still with us. It's a divil of a blow to the I.R.A., so it is.
Beautiful Britons No 122 - January 1966
Well, it had to come, even to a girl as trendy as ROSANNE STUART, the adored pin-up of many a British Army unit.
Rosanne was all for the mini, naturally. The mini, naturally, was all for the best when it came to proving that the gracefully sleek look of Rosanne's legs was all her own. It's not a fundamental immodesty for a girl to be proud of her legs. It's good for her.
And it's lovely for us.
Then along came the midi. Rosanne gave a stifled cry of horror, but what can a girl do in the face of cruel fashion? She could only buy one and try one. "Great disasters," said her bus conductor the day after, "where have your legs gone?"
Ah, where indeed? No, they're still there, as you can see. These pics are just for the record in case they do disappear completely.
Spick No 210 - May 1971
Making our cover look colourful and fetching this month - at least, that was our intention - is Bournemouth boutique girl MARILYN WARD. Marilyn was a model before she took over her boutique.
We usually buy our clothes from Ernest's in the High Street not far from here, but if Marilyn would only stock bowler hats and pin-stripes we'd give up going to Ernest's.
Ernest is quite nice and always very polite. Nothing is too much trouble when he's explaining and illustrating the merits of a forty-guinea waistcoat.
"Look, we don't wear waistcoats."
"Then sir is losing the opportunity to become utterly ravishing, sir." "Look, we bet Marilyn Ward wouldn't try to sell us forty-guinea waistcoats when all we want is a pair of socks with a red stripe.' "Sir is joking, of course. Sir is vainly resisting. Hold him, Montgomery, hold him, Lancelot. There. Now what does sir think of himself? Sir looks beautiful. How can sir think of mere socks when sir is adorned in a waistcoat like that?"
"All right, you win. We'll have it on the never-never. Put it in some brown paper and deliver it. We're off to Bournemouth to buy a pair of socks."
Beautiful Britons No 155 - October 1968
