Welcome to the Rudloe and environs website.

Here you will find news, articles and photos of an area that straddles the Cotswold Area of Outstanding Natural Beauty in north-west Wiltshire.

Contributions in the form of articles or photos are welcome. Even those with completely contrary views to mine!

Thanks to the website builder 1&1 and Rob Brown for the original idea.

Rudloescene now, in January 2014, has a sister, academic rather than anarchic, website about Box history here: http://www.boxpeopleandplaces.co.uk/

It contains thoroughly professional, well-researched articles about Box and its people.

Contact rudloescene through the 'Contact' page.

Young couple at the Thorny Pits Hungarian Hostel post the 1956 Hungarian Uprising. Note that previous articles on rudloescene and on the Box People and Places (BPP) website have used variations of this, presumably correct, name (see following photo) of Thorny Pits - rudloescene has used Thorneypits and BPP Thorney Pits.

The photographs here were discovered (as negatives) by John Briggs who lives in Newport - they were found in a canister in a disused bedsit. The location would have remained unknown if it had not been for three photographs which identified the Thorny Pits Hungarian Hostel. John's story of their discovery follows this first photograph.

March 2018 update. Note now that John has produced a book entitled Nagy's Room with a pictorial history of Lajos Nagy's life starting with the photographs taken at Thorny Pits featured on this website. Extracts from the book may be found at the foot of this webpage.

The background to these images is that I discovered them in a disused bedsit in Newport, Gwent (where I live) quite a few years ago - 2001. In fact it wasn't prints but B&W negs in a plastic canister, which I've scanned. I'm a freelance documentary photographer. The room where I picked up the canister was destroyed by fire the next day, so I was lucky to be able to save them.The bedsit belonged to the man in 077 (above) and 080 (fourth photo below) and his name was Lajos Nagy. I take it that some of the other people in the photos are from his family. I never knew him but I surmise that he'd moved to Newport sometime between 1958 and the 1990's, possibly from Thorney Pits. There was correspondence in Hungarian in the bedsit dated 1996/97. I think he must have been well into his 70's by then and had possibly died. All his earthly possession were in the room in a jumbled mess.

Portraits found, in the Newport bedsit, of Lajos Nagy in military uniform, presumably Hungarian Air Force uniform, given his attire in the second photograph.

The following gallery contains photos of a day, or days, out in Bristol in 1958. Lajos Nagy, his wife and another gentleman (wearing a uniform cap in one image) are pictured

And finally, two photographs of a gentleman (presumably Hungarian) taken on an excursion to Clevedon. These were the only photos of Clevedon and of this gentleman amongst the discovered film rolls. This chap is so well-groomed and smartly dressed that he maybe had a modelling career in mind.

John Briggs has now, in March 2018, produced a book entitled Nagy's Room which uses photographs, letters and greetings cards found in Lajos Nagy's room to create a snapshot of his life. Extracts from John's book are shown below: