Win our fantastic prize bundle worth almost £1,000!

My grandparents lived in Bournville and had worked at Cadburys, so whenever they came to stay with us in Scotland they brought two suitcases with them - one full of clothes and one full of chocolate!

I didn't know any of my grandparents. Wartime split up families and we had no contact with any of my parent's siblings except one aunt who emigrated to Australia in the 60's. Five years ago my mum, then in her 90's was contacted by a firm of heir hunters who said she had been identified as a possible heir to someone who had died intestate. Well I have seen the TV programme! We thought we had won the lottery. It turned out that my mum was entitled to £311! It was from her aunt Violet, her mum's youngest sister who must have been ancient when she died, but the best bit was that the heir hunting company gave us the research they had done into my family. With more time, now I am semi retired, I am finally compiling our family tree.

My gran was always laughing, and always wore a hat, often rather flamboyant and colourful. Her motto in life was 'only do things that make you happy' and used to take us on adventures, like taking the first bus that came along and staying on it to see where it went, buying ice creams when we got there and coming home a different route. She was such fun...........

I do not remember my grandad but my Nana lived with us for a short time until she was allocated a flat. She had a budgie who could talk very well. It used to fly around her front room and one day it landed on my sister's shoulder and she went to flick it off and actually broke it's leg. My Nana had to put it in it's cage and take it to the vet. The vets were able to put a splint on its leg and in no time at all it was back to normal.

My grandparents lived in London and we would go to visit them once a month. My nan would always make "Nana Cake" (a light fruit cake) and she would buy a Cadbury's Swiss Gateau which felt like the height of luxury to me. My granddad (known as Poppa) had a rose garden out the front and was a very keen gardener. I can remember him explaining in great detail how Passion Flowers got their name.

My Grandfather coming home from the local mine with his face as black as soot. In total he did over 52 years down the mine.

Unfortunately I never knew either of my grand mothers and only one of my grand fathers who really wasn't very close. I loved to hear my mother talking about my grand mother who had a very challenging life and would love to have known her.

My favourite game was weighing dried beans and peas on my grandma's scales using the big heavy cast iron weights. I sometimes substituted the buttons from her huge button tin. She was always knitting and won prizes for her cardigans, blankets, coats and jumpers. Although she died almost 30 years ago I can stil remember every detail of her face, in part because it now stares back at me whenever I look into the mirror. It's a mixed blessing!

I used to go over to my grandmothers house every Saturday morning and go to the shops with her. One day when we went up the local high street I thought she was crying and it upset me. She had to explain that older peoples eyes could be weepy and that she wasn't crying. I remember the warmth of her hand holding mine and the smell of her perfume.

I've only just lost my Nan two weeks ago. It brought on a lot of emotions, even though I was very happy she was no longer suffering it made me sad to think I would never see her again! I have endless memories of her especially from my childhood. She would make this amazing Sunday roast lunches for years for so many of us sitting around the table and she did it so effortlessly. And two hours after lunch she would come into the living room with a little trolley with her homemade Victoria sponge and crust less sandwiches and a tea pot of tea and always teacups and saucers! Never mugs! Then would come on songs of praise and antiques roadshow, it was always so cosy! I loved her very much and now every time I have a cup of tea I think of her (I am sure she drank about 15 cups a day)

I only had my paternal grandmother as all my other grandparents had passed away before I was born. She always smelled of Polos and Nivea face cream. My main memories of her are her teaching me to knit, planting seeds in the garden, walking around the garden in her heels, teaching me to swim, playing scrabble, rummy and "beat jack", doing puzzles together, making the best toast ever and reading me Alice in Wonderland before I went to sleep. The last few years of her life werent all that pleasant and she went down hill very quickly. She wasnt always the most pleasant of people and we fell out occasionally as I got older. But we did have a lot of fun together when I was very small and I have some very fond memories of her. She had an awful childhood and it made her quite a cold person but when she allowed the warmth to shine through, she was a great Nan.

I remember helping with the washing my turning the handle on the mangle, that and the outside toilet.

Whenever we went to my paternal grandparents at New Year everyone, including us kids, had a Harvey's Bristol Cream Sherry. Neither of them drank and I'm pretty sure it was the same bottle every year until it was finished. I still buy a bottle of Harvey's Bristol Cream for Christmas and New Year and raise a glass to them. They have both been dead for many years now but every time I see that bottle I always think of them.

My Maternal Grandma was in her 80s when I was small as she had had my mum in her 40s - she had 6 children and stayed with each of them for 2 months of the year.
When she visited I 'lost' my bedroom and slept on a mattress in my mum and dad's room. I perhaps should have found this a pain. I didn't - I loved it - She listened to me read, taught me to knit and sew and had edible goodies sent to her, which she shared with me and my brother. She told us lots of stories and I used to go on walks and learned lots. Makes me smile, thinking of those visits.

My Grandparents were originally from Glasgow and moved to Woking, Surrey in the 1940's with their 3 children. My childhood was spent in Surrey but it was peppered with stories and songs from Glasgow and I can still recognize the wonderful Glaswegian accent when I here it. I can still hear my Nanny singing "We chookie birdie" and "Ally Bally". Their garden was full of stone garden gnomes and one year my Nan paid me £5 (a fortune then) to paint them all. I spent the whole summer covered in white,purple and yellow paint! They were the only colour paints Nan had in her shed.

Walking with granda in the hills behind Port Glasgow and coming across a rabbit caught in a snare. He cut it free and nursed it back to health before releasing it back to the hills.

Being taught how to knit by my Granny. My Mum was bought up in a children's home so she found it hard to be loving and didn't really have any skills she could pass on from her mum, as her mum died very young. But what I did was to go home and teach my Mum how to knit and she loved it, she went on to make many things for her grandkids when they came along.

My favorite memory is arriving at my grandads house in the country to see that he had built 3 swings in the meadow for me and my siblings each one sized to fit.We only visited a couple of times a year but they were just wonderful for us to play on followed by playing in the surrounding long grass.
A house with no running water or electricity, chamber pots under the bed, and sharing beds too, nannies' home made apple straight out of the range, oil lamps in the evening. Simple but so much fun.

My maternal Grandma was always neat and tidy and never went out without her hat, also Granda always wore his trilby which he kept in the sideboard. Grandma was great at baking and made a lovely currant cake. I was always fascinated by the mangle in her kitchen.
My paternal Granda had lovely white hair and smoked a pipe, I still remember him when I catch a whiff of pipe tobacco.

I had two rather ghastly grandparents, who we had to visit all the time. They were my mother’s parents, and she didn’t like my father’s parents! I deeply regret not getting to know my paternal grandparents better. My grandfather was a slightly eccentric Welshman with slurpy kisses which my sister and I did our best to avoid! He had left school at the age of thirteen, and gradually worked his way up to becoming a Departmental Manager at Cardiff’s best department store. He had gruesome stories to tell about beds, which was his area of expertise, such as how much sweat accumulated over a period of time in mattresses! He was very clever with his hands, and built his own house out of wooden boards, in the countryside, on the Welsh borders.

I loved that house. When I was a child, they had no electricity or running water, and we had to take buckets down the little lane to the well, which was a spring in a field. For lighting, they used oil lamps, which attracted clouds of huge moths at night.

My grandmother was a lovely, round and roly-poly lady: very earthy and motherly. She was of Irish descent, and had been born in Mary Anne Street, in Cardiff, which was the “Irish” sector in the city. She was my grandfather’s second wife. His first wife had born him seven children, including my father, but his second wife had only been allowed to have two children! She remained angry about it, declaring she had wanted at least four! She had pure white hair and large beautiful eyes. I always saw her as a farmer’s wife: very domesticated, buxom, hard-working and capable.

I remember one evening, sitting in the firelight with my Grandfather, while he recited my family history. Which is what the Welsh love to do!

And I still treasure a letter he wrote to me, when I was older and going through troubleous times, in which he encouraged me with metaphors about life, talking about the greenfly on his roses. It was the sort of letter I might write, but which would make most people groan!

I loved that man!

My grandma died in her 50's before I was 7. She had a heart condition I remember her in bed with grandad brushing her lovely long dark hair. My grandad used to take me to the library with him and helped me get my own library tickets so I could choose my own books after showing the librarian my clean hands. Grandad used to come camping with us and we all helped put the huge and heavy ex army tent up and hammer in all the wooden tent pegs. Grandads job was to check the guy ropes were all tight. Happy memories!

My paternal grandfather was a miner. He used to bring us "bolleys", discarded steel ball-bearings from the pit-head workings, to use with our marbles.

He made us a rocking horse too.

My Nanny was the best Grandmother I could have wished for. Nothing was too much trouble for her and she always had time for my siblings and me, we used to love going round to visit her.She was forever baking and there was always homemade cake to eat.

I used to love sitting down and playing cards or dominoes with her, while she told me about the good old days. She'd had a really hard life, but always had a smile on her face.

She had a lovely old fashioned tin, full of pretty buttons, my sister and I would spend hours playing with them.

My Gran was very glamorous, I remember her lovely hats and rather smart clothes, I always thought she looked like the Queen Mothet! She used to take me and my cousin to Bobbies in Bournemouth for a knickerbocker Glory, which we loved, it was very large.

She really was a Gran from another age, we all loved her a lot

Sadly the memories of my Grandpa are minimal, clouded by the fact that I lost him and my brother on the same day. His photography and paintings however ensure his memory. My Granny and I however were incredibly close, probably due to our great loss and understanding. My Granny was a tour de force - a wonderfully funny, intelligent font of all knowledge and stubborn old boot. We talked for hours and laughed until we cried. The source of my strength definitely comes for my maternal Grandmother and mother, as do her baking skills, her tenacity and her wit! Incredibly fond of her superstitions and words of wisdom, as much as her nips of sherry and bags of Woolworth's pick and mix, I find myself imparting her words to my daughter. Sadly my Granny never met my children - but my daughter has definitely got a heavy dose of her stubborn streak!