IT was all hands to the pump – or rather the horse and trap – back in 1911 when David Jenkins and his transport had a lucky escape making their way home from Worcester to the hamlet of Prickley Green, near Martley.

As they wended their way down the narrow country lanes a storm blew up, crashing its way across the sky.

Thunder rumbled and lightening flashed but David and his faithful friend kept on going.

Suddenly – disaster. A bolt from on high hit a roadside tree and a branch came down across the trap, miraculously missing both David and the horse.

Fortunately, the neighbourhood turned out to help (and watch) and with much huffing and puffing, sawing and shoving the trap was extricated and it so happened there was a photographer on hand to record the happy scene.

At least that was how it was recorded In Berrow’s Worcester Journal at the time. Call me cynical but I am not quite so sure.

A close look at the photo seems to show the trap stuck in a ditch. The horse is standing there quite calmly and I see no pile of sawn-up tree.

Might an alternative version be that Mr Jenkins was making his way home late from the local pub, where he had tarried too long taking light refreshment, when he tried to take a shortcut across a field and didn’t make it.

To avoid an ear bending from his wife, the fallen branch scenario was invented and the promise of a few free drinks for friends lubricated the wheels, so to speak.

Of course it may be that someone from Prickley Green now emails in saying great-great-uncle David’s lucky escape from a fallen tree is the stuff of family legend. In which case we will set the record straight.

As the custodians of Berrow’s Worcester Journal, the oldest newspaper in the world which began life as the Worcester Postman in 1690, we are privy to some wonderful old material.

Among the most entertaining is the series of both weekly and monthly supplements that used to be distributed with Berrow’s in the early 1900s.

Newspaper production techniques at the time did not allow for many photographs to be carried in the main body of the paper and, looking back at those days and indeed even half-a-century later, you will see the vast majority of publications, if any, did not include photographs with advertisements. If the text needed an illustration, it was a line drawing.

To get around this production blind spot, Berrow’s published separate photographic supplements packed just with images and captions and they came with the edition. It was an early 1910 version which carried David Jenkins’ misfortune in a Martley field.

Printed on a harder, glossier paper than the newsprint, the supplements sometimes referred to stories in the main run of paper or were more often just stand-alone images of interest.

The result was a cross between an illustrated news round-up, a society gossip column and miscellany submitted by readers.

To give a minute example – because each week carried well over 20 photographs – here are some of the contents of the supplements in the years leading up to the start of the First World War in July 1914.

It’s a sobering thought that many of the young men, and some not so young, featured in these pictures were to perish just a few years later in that terrible conflict.