Can you put Anstey in picture over mystery?
ASUCCESSFUL author is trying to solve a real-life family mystery that is set right here in Macclesfield.
Anstey Spraggan - who writes under the name Anstey Harris - was adopted and has never met her biological mother, Christine Harris, who died in 1970.
But she has been in contact with other members of her birth family, who have passed her a photograph featuring Christine, who lived in Macclesfield.
It shows her in the town involved in what is possibly an anti-nuclear weapons protest in the early 1960s and she is the one holding the umbrella.
But Anstey and her relatives are unsure of any concrete details so she is appealing for people who may know about the photo - or Christine - to get in touch.
She said: “It is a brilliant photo, just like a time capsule, there must be someone in Macclesfield who knows what it is.
“I’d just like to know who was involved and what they were doing. I can only assume it was a Macclesfield demo but I can’t find anything online.
“I always knew I was adopted but never met my mother, by the time I went to look for my natural parents she was already longdead.
“She was very politically active.”
Christine, who tragically took her own life aged 25, ran dance nights in Mrs Eaton’s Dance Hall in Macclesfield in the 1960s.
The photo features a van with a sign saying ‘Aldermaston to Algeria - Send Milk not Atomic Dust’.
Anstey, 54, thinks it is most likely to have been taken in 11963, when there were protests over atomic testing in the north African country.
On the back the words ‘Lancashire and Cheshire County Newspapers Ltd’ are stamped and ‘ P840’ written in pencil.
Anstey, whose book The Truths and Triumphs of Grace Atherton was selected for the Richard and Judy Book Club, lives in Deal, Kent.
She is a mum-of-three and in a huge coincidence her daughter Ella now lives in Macclesfield. Another of her daughters is singer Lucy Spraggan.
As well as being an author Anstey also teaches creative writing.
She said: “I know nothing about the photo except what is on the back.”
Anyone with information can contact Anstey via her website www. ansteyharris.com.