The Delcoy family, back, from left, Sharron Delcoy, Myer Decofsky, Willie Simons, second row: Andrew Lester, Lyla Delcoy. Harriet Simons. Front, Tony and Sadie Lester

Sharron Jenkinson was surprised when a friend told her that her picture was in the paper.

An Oxford Mail photographer had taken a picture of her and her family enjoying a leisurely Sunday by the pool at Shillingford in 1962.

It wasn't published at the time and had remained in the Shillingford file in our library until work experience student Jessica Pike chose it for our weekly Changing Faces feature on the opposite page (Memory Lane, July 7).

Sharron, then aged 10, is pictured with her two grandfathers, Myer Decofsky and Willie Simons, grandmother Harriet Simons, mother Lyla Delcoy, her aunt and uncle, Tony and Sadie Lester, cousin Andrew Lester and the family's pet poodle, Gigi.

Mr Decofsky came to Britain from Russia in the 1920s and moved from London to Oxford during the Blitz in the Second World War.

He earned his living running stalls at open markets in Oxford, Swindon and Aylesbury.

When his son, Alf, joined the Army during the war, military officers decided it was too risky to have a Jewish-sounding name and changed it to Delcoy.

Alf's brother joined the RAF and his senior officers were even unhappy with Delcoy, so they named him Dean.

Alf adopted the name Delcoy by deed poll after the war, and that was the name chosen for the family business, which had two shops in the Oxford Covered Market, selling handbags, leather goods and ladies fashions.

Sharron, of Sandfield Road, Headington, Oxford, worked as a Saturday girl in the shops. She recalls some happy family times at Shillingford. She tells me: "It was a regular treat."

3:12pm Monday 21st July 2008

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