Captain Lawrence Oates – Soldier, Explorer, Hero

Earlier this year I visited Gilbert White’s House and Garden  in the pretty village of Selborne, rural Hampshire, which is also home to The Oates Collection.  I am delighted to bring you this article, my third and final, in a series showcasing different aspects of the museum’s collection.

Captain Lawrence ‘Titus’ Edward Grace Oates (1880-1912) began his career as a solider but spent his final years as an explorer, after having joined Captain Robert Falcon Scott’s (1868-1912) ill-fated second expedition to the Antarctic and epic journey of discovery to the South Pole (1911-1912). Lawrence’s uncle was African explorer, Frank Oates (1840-1875).

Last year marked the centenary of Scott’s Second Expedition and thanks to a National Lottery ‘Your Heritage’ grant, match funding by the United Kingdom Antarctic Heritage Trust, generous donations and fundraising, the redesigned Lawrence Oates Gallery is now re-open to the public. The Gallery is a beautifully designed exhibition space which creates the perfect backdrop to tell the poignant life story of this courageous English gentleman. The Gallery also includes new interactive features that enhance the visitor experience including original expedition footage and photographs. The short film featured above, ‘The Oates Collection’, was produced following the recent refurbishment and provides a virtual tour of the first floor galleries. It gives an excellent overview of Lawrence’s extraordinary life.  The Oates Collection is the only museum in the world dedicated to the life of Captain Lawrence Oates.

Lawrence’s beloved mother. He declared that she was the only woman that he had ever loved. Lawrence never married.

Lawrence was born on 17th March, 1880 at Putney, London to William Edward Oates (1841-1896) and Caroline Anne Oates (née Buckton). He was the eldest of four children and enjoyed a privileged childhood at the family country seat, Gestingthorpe Hall, Essex. He attended Eton College for two years but had to leave due to ill-health (he had weak lungs and caught pneumonia) forcing him to continue his education at home with the assistance of a private tutor.

Uniform similar to that worn by Lawrence during the Second Anglo-Boer War in South Africa (1899-1902). On loan to The Lawrence Oates Gallery from the The Inniskilling Dragoons Museum.

He began his military career in 1898 with the 3rd West Yorkshire regiment, followed by a regular army commission in April, 1900 and finally a posting to the 6th Inniskilling dragoons. He served in the South African War (Second Anglo-Boer War, 1899-1902) where he sustained a thigh injury in 1901 which would later came back to trouble him whilst in the Antarctic. It was whilst serving in South Africa that he earned the nickname, ‘No Surrender Oates’ for refusing to surrender to a much superior Boer force. 

Captain Oates’s despatch case used during his military career. On loan to the museum from The Inniskilling Dragoons Museum.

After a short period of convalescence for his thigh injury, he returned to his regiment having been promoted to rank of lieutenant on 2nd February, 1902.  He continued his military career, serving in Ireland, Egypt and India, becoming a captain in 1906.

Lawrence found his posting in India to be too quiet and inactive. An expert horseman, he spent much of his time playing polo, steeplechasing and hunting, even bringing his own pack of hounds to India with him. By the end of 1909, the restless young Lawrence was looking for adventure and applied to join Captain Scott’s Terra Nova Antarctic Expedition, offering his services in any capacity as well as £1,000 (approximately £95,000 in today’s money) towards the expedition funds. Scott received eight thousand applications for this expedition. In March, 1910, Scott accepted Lawrence due to his knowledge of horses (he looked after the expedition’s nineteen ponies) and his military experience. Lawrence was the only army officer to join the Terra Nova Expedition.

On 27th January, 1910, he wrote to his beloved mother whilst in a Delhi hospital:

I have now a great confession to make. I offered my services to the Antarctic Expedition which starts this summer from home under Scott. They wrote and told me to produce my references which I did and they appear to have been so flattering that I have been practically accepted. Now I don’t know whether you approve or not but I feel that I ought to have consulted you before I sent in my name. I did not so as I thought there was very little chance of my being taken.

Scott, however, appears to be a man who can make up his mind and having decided, he told me so at once which was the first intimation I had I was likely to go. Points in favour of going: It will help me professionally as in the Army if they want a man to wash labels off bottles, they would sooner employ a man who had been to the North Pole than one who had only got as far as the Mile End Road.

Now points against. I shall be out of touch for some considerable time. It will require a goodish outlay of about £1,500 as I have offered to subscribe to the funds. I shall have to give up the hounds. I shall annoy the Colonel very much.

This was Scott’s second expedition to the Antarctic, his first had been in 1901 until 1904 when he sailed there on the RRS Discovery, together with a team of fifty men.

Exhibit showing Ponting’s photograph of Scott’s winter quarters in the Antarctic. The Lawrence Oates Gallery.

In the spring of 1910, Lawrence arrived in London to board the Terra Nova. The Terra Nova Expedition was made-up of sixty-five men who operated on ship and shore.  Some of the key members of the team were:

• Captain Robert Falcon Scott (1868-1912) – Expedition leader who died on the return journey from the South Pole;
• Dr Edward Adrian Wilson (1872-1912) – Chief Scientist who died on the return journey from the South Pole;
• Henry Robertson (Birdie) Bowers (1883-1912) – died on the return journey from the South Pole;
• Captain Lawrence ‘Titus’ Oates (1880-1912) – died on the return journey from the South Pole;
• Edgar Evans (1876-1912) – died on the return journey from the South Pole;
• Admiral Edward Ratcliffe Garth Russell Evans (Teddy Evans) (1881-1957);
• William Lashly (1867-1940);
• Tom Crean (1877-1938);
• Thomas C. Clissold (1886-1963). The cook who took part in two depot-laying journeys and trained sledge dogs. He was also a clever inventor of mechanical devices. To view photographs of Clissold, taken by Ponting, CLICK HERE.
• Herbert Ponting (1870-1935). The expedition’s official photographer. His high-quality images produced on glass-plate negatives have left us with an incredible visual legacy of Scott’s expedition. Ponting also shot extensive film footage;
• A full list of crew members who took part in the Terra Nova Expedition is available on the Antarctic Heritage Trust’s (NZ) website. CLICK HERE.
  

  Exhibit in The Lawrence Oates Gallery showing replicas of Herbert Ponting’s glass-plate negatives.

Replica of the Terra Nova (scale 1/8 inch to 1 foot) made by Commander Rupert Head RN, 2011-2012. The Lawrence Oates Gallery.

Terra Nova (a converted Dundee whaler) eventually sailed from Cardiff, Wales bound for New Zealand on 15th June, 1910. Additional supplies were loaded onto the ship in New Zealand, including thirty-four dogs, nineteen Siberian ponies (brought by Scott much to Lawrence’s frustration, Scott was not a horseman and had brought the wrong breed of pony, ‘a wretched load of crocks’ wrote Oates) and three motorised sledges. The Terra Nova departed Port Chalmers, New Zealand on 29th November, 1910 eventually arriving at Ross Island, near the continent of Antarctica, on 4th January, 1911.

‘Scott’s science’ display panel in The Lawrence Oates Gallery.

Both of Scott’s expeditions were based upon extensive programmes of scientific discovery. The Chief Scientist on the Terra Nova Expedition was Dr Edward Wilson who declared: ‘We want the bagging of the Pole to be merely an item in the results’. Substantial scientific data and specimens were collected by Scott and his team. The scientific party included geologists, biologists, physicists and one meteorologist (George C. Simpson, 1878-1965) who created a weather station in the Antarctic.

Apsley GB Cherry-Garrard (1886-1959), a zoologist on the team, wrote and published The Worst Journey in the World (1922). The publication tells how Cherry-Garrard, Bowers and Wilson journeyed to Cape Crozier in darkness and dreadful winter weather to collect eggs from the emperor penguin colony.  The work done by Scott and his team of scientists created the foundations for Antarctic science today.

Scott led the march south from Cape Evans Base Camp on 1st November, 1911. On 3rd January, 1912 Scott selected a five-man team who would accompany him on the final part of the journey to the South Pole. He chose Dr Wilson, Henry Bowers, Edgar Evans and Lawrence Oates. The team reached the South Pole on 18th January, 1912, only to discover that Norwegian explorer Roald Amundsen (1872-1928) and his team, had arrived there five weeks prior.

On 25th January, 1912, Scott’s five-man team began the eight hundred mile return journey. Fearing the worst and with his men in a bad way physically and emotionally, Scott asked Dr Wilson to issue each of his team with thirty opium tablets. Should the need arise the men could elect to end their own lives. The tablets were never used. Evans died on the 17th February, 1912. Lawrence died on 17th March, 1912. The remaining team members, Scott, Wilson and Bowers, succumbed to starvation and exhaustion and died c. 29th March, 1912 after having spent ten days trapped by a blizzard only eighteen miles from life-saving supplies that had been deposited at One Ton Depot. The team’s tent and bodies (except for Lawrence’s which was never recovered) were found eight months later, on 12th November, 1912, by a relief expedition led by Edward Atkinson. A cairn was built over the location of the tent.

The men needed 5,500 calories each day and were only consuming 4,430 and no vitamin C which made them prone to bouts of scurvy. The above display is on loan to The Lawrence Oates Gallery from The Sutton Collection. Chief Petty Officer Tom Williamson was a member of the search party that found Captain Scott’s last camp and the bodies of Scott, Wilson and Bowers. From there and from the hut he brought back a number of items which now comprises the ‘Sutton Collection.’ Oates wrote: ‘..my Pemmican must have disagreed with me at breakfast, for coming along I felt very depressed and homesick.’ (15th January, 1912)

The Lawrence Oates Gallery.

Sledge on display in The Lawrence Oates Gallery. Fully loaded a sledge needed 4 men to pull it. Some sledges were 10ft long (3m) others were 12ft long (3.65m) and could weigh as much as 1,121lbs (51kg) when fully loaded with equipment and rations. Birdie Bowers wrote:’…I have never pulled so hard or so nearly crushed my inside into my backbone by the everlasting jerking on the canvas band round my unfortunate tummy.’

The Last Few Months of The Terra Nova Expedition – In Their Own Words

• Scott told me today he was very pleased with the way the ponies were going.. (Oates, 8th November, 1911);
• I am anxious about these beasts (ponies) and if they pull through well, all the thanks will be due to Oates. (Scott, 12th November, 1911);
• Scott realises now what awful cripples our ponies are and carries a face like a tired sea boot in consequence. (Oates, 18th November, 1911);
• …Whenever one peeped out of the tent there was Oates, wet to the skin, trying to keep life in his charges. Poor Oates had suffered as much as the ponies. (Evans, 4-8th December, 1911);
• Thank God the horses are now all done with and we begin the heavier work ourselves. (Oates, Shambles Camp, 9th December, 1911. Oates has to shoot the remaining ponies);
• The back tendon of my right leg feels as if it has been stretched about four inches. I hope to goodness it is not going to give me trouble. (Oates, 26th December, 1911);
• I have been selected to go on to the Pole with Scott…What a lot we shall have to talk about when we get back – God bless you and keep you well until I come home…The excitement was intense. It was obvious that with five fit men – the achievement was merely a matter of ten or eleven days’ good sledging (Oates, writing to his mother, 3rd January, 1912);
• ..my Pemmican must have disagreed with me at breakfast, for coming along I felt very depressed and homesick. (Oates, 15th January, 1912);
• We are not a very happy party tonight. We have picked up the Norskies tracks… Scott is taking his defeat much better than I expected. (Oates, 16th January, 1912)
• Great God! This is an awful place and terrible enough for us to have laboured here without the reward of priority. Now for the run home and a desperate struggle. I wonder we can do it. (Scott, 18th January, 1912);
• One of my big toes has turned black. I hope it is not going to lame me for marching. (Oates, 25th January, 1912);
• Titus‘ [Oates] toes are blackening and his nose and cheeks are dead yellow. At the same time Evans’s fingers were suppurating and his nails came off. His nose was rotten. (Wilson, 31st January, 1912);
• Dug up Christopher’s [pony] head for food but it was rotten. (Oates, his last diary entry, 24th February, 1912);
• Titus Oates is very near the end, one feels. What we will do, God only knows. (Scott, 11th March, 1912);
• He [Oates] was a brave soul. This was the end. He slept through the night before last hoping not to wake, but he woke in the morning – yesterday. He said “I am just going outside and may be some time.” He went into the blizzard and we have not seen him since. (Scott, 16-17 March, 1912)
  

  The Lawrence Oates Gallery.

  

  The Lawrence Oates Gallery.

Dear Mrs Oates,

This is a sad ending to our undertaking. Your son died a very noble death, God knows. I have never seen or heard of such courage as he showed from first to last with his feet both badly frostbitten – never a word or a sign of complaint or of the pain, he was a great example. Dear Mrs Oates, he asked me at the end to see you and to give you this diary of his. You, he told me, are the only woman he has ever loved. Now I am in the same can and I can no longer hope to see either you or my beloved wife or my mother or father – the end is close upon us, but these diaries will be found and this note will reach you some day.

Please be so good as to send pages 54 and 55 of this book to my beloved wife addressed Mrs Ted Wilson, Westal, Cheltenham. Please do this for me dear Mrs Oates – my wife has a real faith in God and so your son tells me have you – and so have I – and if ever a man died like a noble soul and in a Christ like spirit your son did. Our whole journey’s record is clean and though disastrous – has no shadow over it. He died like a man and a soldier without a word of regret or complaint except that he hadn’t written to you at the last, but the cold has been intense and I fear we have all of us left writing alone until it is almost too late to attempt anything but the most scrappy notes.

God comfort you in your loss.

Yours sincerely

E.A. Wilson.

Replica of the home-made tree made by Scott’s team to celebrate Midwinter Day (22nd June, 1911). The Lawrence Oates Gallery.

Ponting’s photograph of Scott’s team making the Midwinter Day tree. Oates sits at the table on the left. The Lawrence Oates Gallery.

Exhibit showing contemporary polar-exploration clothing. The Lawrence Oates Gallery.

Rations used in modern-day polar-exploration. The Lawrence Oates Gallery.

2013 Events at Gilbert White’s House and Garden

• Wild at White’s Easter Bunny Hunt. Good Friday, 29th March until Sunday 14th April. Come and explore the stunning gardens and find those spritely bunnies hiding in the grounds. Included in the normal admission fee;
• Gilbert White Study Day for the WEA. Monday 15th April (10-3pm). £45. Pre-booking essential;
• Wild at White’s African Safari. Saturday 25th May until Sunday 2nd June. Follow in the footsteps of Victorian Explorer Frank Oates and hunt for the wild animals of the African Continent hidden in the gardens. Included in the normal admission fee;
• 21st Unusual Plants Fair. Saturday 15th and Sunday 16th June. Over Father’s Day weekend there will be over thirty specialist growers of rare and unusual plants, trees, shrubs and seeds trading in the lovely grounds at the Museum. Admission for Plant Fair and Gardens only: £6 Adults, £2.50 Children, Under 5s Free. Please note Season Passes and ‘2 for 1’ vouchers are not valid on Bank Holidays and Special Event Days;
• Regency-style costume making workshop. Sunday 30th June (11am-4.30pm). Part of Alton’s Jane Austen Regency Week (Saturday 22nd – Sunday 30th June).  Part of the Museum’s Volunteering Project you will be helping to add to their collection of period-style clothes and accessories. Some basic sewing experience is preferred. Both hand and machine techniques will be used to create and accessorize one or two Regency outfits using a commercial pattern. Tickets include a morning coffee, light buffet lunch and afternoon tea. Limited places – pre-booking essential. £10 per ticket. Book now in the museum, or by calling: 01420 511 275. CLICK HERE, for more information on this super workshop;
• Teddy Bear Trail and Picnic. Throughout July. This event is part of the Hampshire Food Festival organised by Hampshire Fare (1st-31st July). There will be a teddy bear trail in the grounds of Gilbert White’s House where you will identify local produce that makes up the best picnic! Free entry for all children accompanied by a teddy bear and adult;
• Gilbert’s Games and Country Fair. Saturday 3rd and Sunday 4th August. This is a very popular annual event. Fun and games for all the family suitable for all ages and abilities. Take part or compete in some traditional eighteenth century games and pastimes including stool ball, Aunt Sally, croquet, cricket and melon rolling! There will also be local crafts people demonstrating their skills which all take place in Gilbert’s beautiful House and Garden. Some activities may not be suitable for younger children; all children should be accompanied by an adult. Admission to the House, Garden and Games: £7 Adults, £2 Children, Under 5s Free. Please note Season Passes and ‘2 for 1’ vouchers are not valid on Bank Holidays and Special Event Days;
• Jane Austen’s ‘Sense and Sensibility’, outdoor production by the Chapterhouse Theatre Company. Sunday 25th August, from 6pm. Bring a picnic. Adults £13.50, Students & Children £9; Families £40 (2 Adults + 2 Child), 10% discount for parties of ten or more. Telephone: 01420 511 275 to put your name down for tickets before they are released on sale;
• Wild at White’s Apples and Tortoises. Saturday 26th October until Sunday 3rd November. Normal admission charges apply;
• Mulled Wine Day. Sunday 1st December.
• Regency Dance. Saturday 7th December (7.30pm-11pm);

Opening times for 2013

• Until 31st March, Tuesday-Sunday (10.30am-4.30pm);
• 1st April-31st October, Tuesday-Sunday (10.30am-5.15pm)
• 1st November-22nd December, Tuesday-Sunday (10.30am-4.30pm).
• Also open on Bank Holiday Mondays, and Mondays in July & August;

Standard Admission Charges For 2013

Adult	£8.50
Concession	£7.50
Under 16	£3.00
Under 5	Free
Family Ticket (2A + 3C)	£20.00
Pre-booked group of 10 or more	£6.50
Garden Only	£6.50

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Heath Robinson Exhibition – St. Barbe Museum & Art Gallery

‘The Fairy’s Birthday’. Pen, ink and watercolour by Heath Robinson published in Holly Leaves, December, 1925, p.21. Heath Robinson’s goblins appeared in the Christmas Numbers of a variety of magazines between 1919-1929. They are distinguished by their homely and somewhat bumbling appearance. They may be short-sighted, overweight and suffer from pains in their joints or shortness of breath. They may have a rustic quality and may well have been based on the characters that Heath met in and around Cranleigh. © William Heath Robinson Trust. St. Barbe Museum & Art Gallery.

I was delighted to be asked to review an exhibition showcasing a collection of precise ink drawings and delicate watercolours by William Heath Robinson (1872 – 1944) which is currently on at St Barbe Museum & Art Gallery, Lymington, Hampshire until Saturday 20^th April, 2013. The Heath Robinson exhibition is supported by Rathbones investment management services. This exhibition, from the William Heath Robinson Trust, showcases illustrations he produced for works by William Shakespeare, Hans Christian Anderson and Rudyard Kipling (1865-1936) as well as for his own books. There will also, of course, be a number of his much-loved designs for eccentric contraptions and humorous drawings.

Heath Robinson has become a byword for the eccentric and rickety inventions which he created. In the 1930s, he was known as the ‘Gadget King’, a remarkable title given that in real life Heath was not very practically minded. He had only ever been abroad once, towards the end of the First World War, when he illustrated scenes from the western front. At the beginning of his career he was ranked with Arthur Rackham (1867-1939) and Edmund Dulac (1882-1953) as one of Britain’s foremost illustrators.

Heath counted among his friends, authors H.G. Wells (1866-1946) and Rudyard Kipling (1865-1936), Heath illustrated Kipling’s A Song of The English (1909, published by Hodder & Stoughton), which celebrated Edwardian pride in the Empire. Heath visited Kipling in Sussex to discuss the book. Illustrations from the publication feature in the exhibition.

Heath was born on 31st May 1872 at 25 Ennis Road, Stroud Green, London. His father Thomas Robinson (1838-1902) chief illustrator of Penny Illustrated Paper and his mother, Eliza Heath (1849-1921), an innkeeper’s daughter. The Robinsons had seven children, Heath was their third child. Heath’s elder brothers Thomas (1869-1953) and Charles (1870-1937) also became well-known book illustrators.

Heath attended Miss Mole’s dame-school, Holloway College from 1880 to 1884 and Islington proprietary school from 1884 to 1887. He did not thrive in education, a fact which his father recognised removing him, aged fifteen, from the proprietary school and sending him instead to Islington Art School, where he remained for five years. He won a studentship to the Royal Academy Schools, graduating in January 1897, aged twenty-five. Whilst at the RA, Heath had become an accomplished landscape painter but subsequently struggled to make a living selling his artworks. Heath’s passion for painting remained with him for the rest of his life, in his spare time he continued to produce landscapes, experimenting with effects of light and colour, as well as figure studies in watercolour.

In order to further his artistic career he decided to join his brothers who were already working as illustrators. Although being an illustrator was a respectable profession, it could be notoriously difficult to make a living from. However, Heath had real talent for humorous art which made him much in demand, especially in the world of advertising. He also took the occasional commission for book and magazine illustrations (The Sketch, The Bystander and The Tatler).

Some of Heath’s earliest book illustrations were published in 1897 and by 1900 he had illustrated editions of The Arabian Nights’ Entertainments, Fairy Tales From Hans Christian Anderson (1899, published by J. M. Dent) and The Poems of Edgar Allan Poe (1900, these illustrations were influenced by the drawings of Aubrey Beardsley (1872-1898)). Copies of the Poe publication are extremely rare, a limited edition of only seventy-five copies were produced, printed on Japanese vellum. He illustrated Anderson’s Fairy Tales with his brothers, Thomas and Charles.

‘The Aeronaut’ by Heath Robinson © William Heath Robinson Trust. St. Barbe Museum & Art Gallery.

Heath’s fortunes improved when he illustrated his own fantasy for children The Adventures of Uncle Lubin (1902, published by Grant Richards). He wrote about this publication in his biography, My Line of Life (1938, published by Blackie & Son): ‘The story is episodic in form, telling the tale of Uncle Lubin, a little old man in a tall hat and long coat, as he attempts to retrieve his nephew, Baby Peter, from the clutches of the wicked bag-bird.’

This book was particularly important, although not a best seller, it did earn Heath enough money to enable him to marry Josephine Constance Latey (1878-1974), the daughter of newspaper editor John Latey, on 30th April, 1903, they set-up home in Holloway Road. As luck would have it, a Canadian by name of Chase Ed. Potter had read Lubin and commissioned Heath to illustrate some advertisements he was writing for Lamson Paragon Supply Company. Heath was paid, in cash, for each drawing.

In 1903, Heath embarked upon his most ambitious project to-date, The Works of Mr Francis Rabelais, commissioned by Grant Richards. The book contained two hundred and fifty-four illustrations, a hundred of which were full-page illustrations, the rest smaller ones. The book was published in 1904 in two large quarto volumes to critical acclaim. Unfortunately, Grant Richards went bankrupt in November 1904 leaving Heath short of the monies that he had hoped to earn.

Heath moved to Pinner, Middlesex, in 1908 and lived there with his family until 1918, residing at Moy Lodge from 1910. Following his move to Pinner and until 1914, Heath continued to produce book illustrations as well as cartoons for The Sketch and The Strand Magazine, amongst other periodicals. He moved to Cranleigh in Surrey in 1918 remaining there until 1929, when he relocated to Highgate, London. In Highgate, he first lived in Shepherd’s Hill and later 25 Southwood Avenue, close to where he had spent a majority of his childhood.

‘Rough sketch for doubling Gloucester cheese’ by Heath Robinson.
© William Heath Robinson Trust. St. Barbe Museum & Art Gallery.

One of Heath’s finest achievements as an illustrator were forty-one pen and ink drawings for A Midsummer Night’s Dream (1914, published by Constable & Co). A contemporary review, in The Times Literary Supplement, described the publication as: ‘The most complete and beautiful specimen before us of an illustrated book as a single work of art…’. A copy of the publication is on display in the exhibition. There is an inscription in the front of this book, which is on display in the exhibition, from Heath to his mother: ‘To my good mother with very best wishes from her affectionate son, will.’

In 1915, Heath produced illustrations for The Water Babies by Charles Kingsley (1819-1875) (published by Constable & Co). The edition was originally planned as a lavish gift book but due to the economic climate at the end of World War One, it was published as a modest octavo volume. The illustrations are some of Heath’s finest and show a clear influence of Japanese prints. The Japanese style influenced an entire generation of illustrators.

At the end of World War One, despite the market for lavishly illustrated gift books having all but disappeared, Heath’s talents were still in demand. He obtained a number of commissions for illustrations to appear in advertisements and magazines. Between 1903 and 1942, he produced about a hundred advertising drawings for a wide range of products including Mackintosh Toffees, biscuits, asbestos cement roofs, whiskey and paper. He had a particular talent for parodying the processes by which the various products were made as well as contrasting some of the more desirable qualities of these products. The drawings often took the form of ‘before and after’, i.e. unhappy scenes where the product was absent and happy scenes where the product’s inclusion made everything appear better. A campaign of particular note was for Hovis bread.

‘German breaches of the Hague Convention – Huns using siphons of laughing gas to overcome our troops before an attack in close formation.’ Pen, ink, watercolour and bodycolour. Published in The Sketch, August 1915. © William Heath Robinson Trust. St. Barbe Museum & Art Gallery.

Between 1920 and 1936, Heath produced over two hundred drawings for Connolly Bros. (Curriers) Ltd, a majority of which are still in the company’s possession. These collection of drawings were published by the firm as Heath Robinson on Leather, to commemorate the company’s 50th anniversary, in 1928, and were reissued to mark the company’s centenary in 1978. The exhibition includes examples of Heath’s illustrations for both Hovis and the Connolly Bros. (Curriers) Ltd. A particularly delightful illustration for the latter is ‘William the Conqueror appreciates the comfort of leather when crossing the Channel’, pen and ink, 1933.

In January 1921, Heath was commissioned by Jonathan Cape to produce colour illustrations for a complete works of Shakespeare. He completed the drawings in June 1922.  Unfortunately, only a handful of these colour illustrations still exist, several rare examples of which are in the exhibition. Jonathan Cape could not find an American partner to share the cost of publication and because of the continuing decline in the market for illustrated books, the edition was never published.

In 1927, Heath produced sixteen designs in full colour, based on popular nursery rhymes, which featured on a range of nursery china for Soane & Smith, Knightsbridge. The china was produced by W. R. Midwinter of Burslem, Staffordshire. Examples from this range can been seen in the exhibition. The attention to detail in the frieze of children’s faces is exquisite. This frieze appeared on the inside rim of cups, bowls and around the outside edge of plates and porringers.

Other characters featured included: goblins; Jack Spratt and his wife; Tom, Tom the Piper’s son and the old woman who lived in a shoe. The range was extensive and ran to cereal bowls, saucers, jam pots, sugar bowls, mugs, egg cups and even a tureen.  The service was so popular that it was later sold through a variety of outlets, although the later designs were simplified with the frieze of children’s faces replaced by a simple band of dark blue or pale green.

One of my favourite drawings in the exhibition is a pen, ink and watercolour sketch produced by Heath in 1930 for the luxury trans-Atlantic liner, RMS Empress of Britain (1931) operated by Canadian Pacific Steamship Company which was built in Scotland. The sketch is divided into two parts, the top features a suggested design for ‘The ‘Knickerbocker’ Cocktail Bar’ and the bottom half of the sketch is a design for ‘The Children’s Room’. A closer look at the drawing for the Cocktail Bar reveals some of Heath’s humorous touches. This illustration draws its inspiration from experiences of drinking a cocktail, which according to Heath make you affectionate, give you courage, nerve and produce human kindness. There is also a Cocktail Bird, A Pleasant Surprise and Cocktail shaking in the East.

The Empress of Britain operated from 1931 until 1939 as a steam passenger liner designed to carry 1,195 passengers (465 first class, 260 second class and 470 third class). During the summer months it sailed along the England-Canada route. In 1939, it was requisitioned for war work and became a troop carrier. It was torpedoed on 28th October, 1940 by a German U-boat (U-32) on the northwest of Bloody Foreland, County Donegal, Ireland. Mystery still surrounds the cargo it was supposed to be carrying at the time. It was thought to have been a shipment of gold, bound for North America, a fact that has never been proved.

Another intriguing pen and ink drawing, which I last saw whilst an art history undergraduate, is from How To Live In A Flat (1936), by W. H. Robinson and K.R.G. Browne, published by Hutchison & Co. ’The One-Piece Chromium Steel Dining Suite’ makes a striking social statement about the popularity of flat-dwelling in the interwar years and contains humorous touches by Heath. In the following extract from the publication, explanation is given for another of Heath’s illustrations: ‘A vote of thanks, therefore, is due to Mr Heath Robinson for demonstrating that a certain amount of quiet fun can be extracted even from the last word in geometrical carpetry. Carpet draughts, they tell me, is just the thing for the long winter evenings, and as it can be played sitting-down – will keep the old folks happy and amused while the young people are out at the movies.’ (Robinson & Browne, 1936, p.42).

In 1944, Heath underwent exploratory surgery, following which he returned home to Southwood Avenue, Highgate, where he died of a stroke on 13th September, later on in the same year. He is buried at St. Marylebone cemetery, East Finchley. This quality exhibition is a delight for both children and adults, it is guaranteed to make you smile and raise a chuckle.

Tickets to the Heath Robinson exhibition and St. Barbe Museum, which is open between 10am and 4pm, Monday to Saturday, cost £4 for adults, £3 for senior citizens and students, £2 for children aged five to 15, and £10 for a family of two adults and up to four children; under fives are admitted free of charge. For more details visit www.stbarbe-museum.org.uk or telephone 01590 676969.

• Thursday 11th April, 2013, 10.30am-3.30pm there is a Heath Robinson themed Family Explorer Day at St. Barbe Museum. The Museum’s Explorer Days are engaging and fun hands-on creative activities for children and their family, including the opportunity to handle museum objects. Price is included in admission. Day ticket: Adult £4, Concession £3, Child £2, Family £10. For further information, CLICK HERE.
  

  Arts & Crafts selling Exhibition featuring work by regional artists, currently on at The Old School Gallery, St. Barbe Museum, Lymington until 13th April, 2013.

Arts & Crafts Exhibition – 9th March until 13th April, 2013

The Old School Gallery – St. Barbe Museum

An added bonus when you visit the Heath Robinson exhibition, is the Arts and Crafts Exhibition currently on at The Old School Gallery, located in the same building as the Museum. This is the Museum’s first selling exhibition, showcasing arts and crafts by regional artists:  Carol-Anne Savage (contemporary jewellery); Victoria Garland Prints (Prints); Mrs Ollie Chappell (Raku Ceramics); Sue Baker (papier mâché fish); Paul Reeves (beautifully turned wooden objects made from wood found in and around the New Forest or from dead or fallen trees) and Michael Turner (stainless steel sculpture). The range of items for sale is excellent and of an exceptionally high standard.

Sue Baker’s papier mâché fish looked striking hung on the white-washed walls of The Old School Gallery. Her inspiration for the fish comes from when she lived in Cornwall: ‘I’ve always enjoyed messing about with paints and drawing, and enjoy the point where craft and art overlap. I fell into the papier mâché interest over twenty years ago. Having tried a few experiments following ideas in a book. I decided I preferred to do my own thing. The fish theme developed from there. Living in Cornwall, where I was born (I moved to Dorset ten years ago), the fish were an obvious choice I suppose. I started making imaginative fish; but the demand for realistic fish grew, so I seem to make them exclusively now.’

Sculptor Michael Turner’s steel lion looking majestic in the entrance of St. Barbe Museum, Lymington. The lion is for sale. Price on application.

A stainless steel lion by Lymington based sculptor Michael Turner, which is positioned in the Museum’s entrance, proved to be a big hit with both adults and children on the Saturday I visited. If you have travelled through Heathrow Airport’s Terminal 5 in recent years, you may well have seen Michael’s lion on display there. The lion is for sale, price on application.

Michael describes his work thus: ‘I have been a sculptor for over fifteen years now. I enjoy using recycled stainless steel. In our throw away society, it’s great for me to be able to take discarded material and turn it into something beautiful, and every project takes on a new challenge. My inspiration mainly comes from nature in all its forms. I am especially fascinated by insects which I never tire of reproducing, experimenting constantly with different types of finishes on the basic stainless steel. I use polishing, paint and heat effects to produce a unique piece every time. My work is exhibited in selected galleries and recently featured in Harvey Nichols’ London and Edinburgh stores, as well as the Royal West of England Academy.’

• The Arts & Crafts Exhibition continues at St. Barbe Museum, until 13th April, 2013.

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Milestones – Hampshire’s Living History Museum

Milestones – Hampshire’s Living History Museum, Basingstoke, Hampshire.

Situated on the outskirts of Basingstoke, Milestones is Hampshire’s Living History Museum. I was recently invited to spend a day there, meeting Museum staff. Afterwards, I enjoyed a leisurely stroll around the atmospheric cobbled streets, visiting buildings and shops that have been recreated from a bygone era.

A well-stocked Co-op shop at Milestones. The Co-op were one of the first high-street retailers to pre-package many of the goods they sold.

Milestones is a relatively new Museum and was the vision of curator Gary Wragg. In 1996, a Heritage Lottery Fund grant, of over £6 million, was awarded to build a Museum that celebrated Hampshire’s rich industrial and social heritage.  The new building also enabled some of the vast collection of objects housed in the county’s museum store to be put on display, for the very first time, in one location. Milestones was opened on 1st December 2000 by HRH The Duke of Edinburgh. The Museum has since gone from strength to strength and in 2003 was awarded the National Heritage Museum of the Year Social and Industrial History Award.

A Victorian chemist’s shop window. Milestones.

There are over twenty-one thousand objects on display at Milestones from the Victorian era to the 1940s.  It is a pure delight for anyone with a passion for history, no matter what your age, to be able to enjoy domestic and industrial artefacts in their appropriate context.  In the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, the county of Hampshire was an extremely important centre for industrial manufacture and Milestones showcases this superbly.

1956 record player in ‘You Must Remember This’. This record player was called ‘Snow White’s Coffin’ due to the fact that the functions are clearly visible through the Perspex cover. Designed by Dieter Rams and made by Braun.

A 1960s kitchen. ‘You Must Remember This’, Milestones.

One of my favourite areas of Milestones was ‘You Must Remember This’. Room settings from the 1930s-1970s designed to encourage the visitor to talk about their own memories. Above image is the 1940s kitchen.

I asked the Commercial Activities Manager at Milestones, Louise Mackay, what exhibits are most popular with visitors?: ‘The steam locomotives are a favourite with all ages but the 1940s exhibits are probably our most popular at the moment. I think that one of the reasons is our older visitors can still identify with this period. Over the last few years, interest in all things vintage has also helped raise awareness of this era. In fact earlier this month we hosted our first Blackout Party. An after hours event for adults, with a 1940s theme. Guests listened to music from the era and many came dressed in Forties clothes. We had about four hundred guests. Next summer we are hoping to host another Vintage Festival here and expect this to be as popular with our visitors as the one we held in June.’

The historic Fire Station at Milestones. Children can dress-up in a Fireman’s outfit and climb on board a Fire Engine.

Milestones is divided into court yards, main streets and back streets which gives the visitor the experience of walking around an established town. In Anna Valley Place, enter Waterloo Ironworks and discover the history of W. Tasker & Sons Ltd, an engineering firm that was based near to Andover, Hampshire. Taskers was established in 1813 and for one hundred and seventy years became the leading manufacturer of a wide range of agricultural implements. In the Thornycroft works shed there is a large collection of vehicles manufactured by this Basingstoke firm. Another important industrial firm was Wallis & Steevens, based in Basingstoke at Station Hill. Founded in 1856 and during its one hundred and twenty-five years of trading they designed steam engines, tractors, wagons and road rollers. They were particularly known for their steam and petrol rollers.

This object caught my eye in the jeweller’s and watchmaker’s shop. It is a bracket clock in a gilt brass case by J. R. Arnold. English, London. c.1843. The clock would once have been covered by a glass dome.

On the main High Street you can take visit a wide range of shops stocked with artefacts from times past. Every type of trade is represented, greengrocer, ironmonger, jeweller and watchmaker, Co-operative Society, Post-Office, milliner, saddlery, sweet shop, cycle shop, gas showroom, garage, a pub, chemist, photographer, toy shop and many more besides.

The streets are filled with vintage vehicles and there is even a railway station which is a replica of the former Chesil Street Station in Winchester complete with a Governess Cart setting-down its passengers for an afternoon departure.

A station porter greets a Governess, her charge and mistress at Chesil Street Station Winchester. Milestones.

A free hand-held audio guide is also available for visitors. This provides additional background information on the exhibits and helps to bring the settings to life.  I must praise the curatorial team who have avoided the common mistake, so often made with this type of museum, of creating a historical ‘theme park’. The costumed interpreters are not intrusive or pushy but extremely knowledgeable about their particular era and most importantly have a genuine passion for bringing the past alive and to as wider audience as possible. It is with this talented group of individuals that I found the heart and soul of Milestones.

The 1940s sweet shop at Milestones.

Armed with my penny and mini ration book sheet, which visitors can obtain from the gift shop, I was escorted to the 1940s sweet shop by Kate, one of the superb costumed interpreters. The delightful young lady explained to me the idea behind this particular exhibit: ‘We would like visitors to experience a traditional sweet shop during World War Two when rationing was in place. They can select one type of sweet from the selection on offer here and for your penny you will get two ounces of sweets. We then mark-off your ration sheet to show you have had your weekly allowance. Two ounces were the weekly sweet ration in the 1940s. There is no chocolate available in this sweetshop either.’

Sweets were rationed in Britain from 26th July 1942 to 5th February 1953. Chocolate was rationed from 1941. The government banned manufacturers from using fresh milk. Consequently, Ration Chocolate was all that was available and this was made using dried skimmed milk powder.

Inside the 1940s sweet shop. Milestones.

Kate told me about the origin of various sweets that we all know and love today.  I didn’t realise that ‘Jelly Babies’ were originally known as ‘Peace Babies’.  Bassett’s created ‘Peace Babies’ in 1918, to mark the end of World War One. During World War Two, production ceased and in 1953 the popular sweet was re-launched as ‘Jelly Babies’.  I chose two ounces of Jelly Babies.

The sweet shop is staffed by a team of dedicated volunteers and open on weekdays 1-3pm and weekends, bank holidays and school holidays 12-4pm.  One of the volunteers told me why she enjoyed working in the shop so much: ‘It is the stories that we are told by some of our older customers who remember similar sweet shops during the War. One particular customer told me that when she was a child, her town was badly bombed one night. The next day she discovered that in addition to the homes that were destroyed in her neighbourhood, the sweet shop had also suffered the same fate. It was the loss of the local sweet shop that she had found particularly upsetting.  Another customer told me that when she got her weekly sweet rations she would choose sweets that she could cut in half so that they lasted longer. I also enjoy seeing grandparents talking to their grandchildren about their memories of Wartime and rationing. It is lovely to see such interactions between the different generations.’

In 1967, famous chocolate manufacturers, Bendicks, moved to premises in Winchester, Hampshire. Bendicks were established in 1930 by Mr Oscar Benson and Colonel ‘Bertie’ Dickson and began production in 1931 from a tiny basement beneath 184 Church Street, Kensington, London. In 1962, Bendicks received the much coveted Royal Warrant.  Bendicks dark English mint batons use Black Mitcham peppermint that is grown at a farm in the foothills of the Hampshire Downs.

Below are a few sweet brands that you might know, together with the year they first went on sale:

1881 – Rowntree’s Crystallised gums (later became Fruit Pastilles)

1887 – Cadbury’s Milk Chocolate

1899-1900 – Seaside rock first produced

1909 – Maynard’s Wine Gums

1911 – Wrigley’s Chewing Gum

1914 – Fry’s Turkish Delight

c.1918 – Fox’s Glacier Mins

1935 – Rowntree’s Chocolate Crisps (became Kit Kat in 1937)

1938 – Cadbury’s Roses

1951 – Bounty (Mars)

1959 – Mars’ Opal Fruits

1967 – Mars’ Twix

(Milestones, Living History Museum)

Inside the 1930s gramophone shop. Milestones.

Kate then accompanied me across the pretty cobble streets to the 1930s gramophone record shop.  This shop really is something special, a stunning interior packed to the rafters with home entertainment objects from a bygone era. Visitors select a record, from a large choice presented in a catalogue, to be played on a 1928 gramophone.  I just couldn’t decide, so asked Kate to choose her favourite, which was ‘Teddy Bears’ Picnic’ (1932).

Costumed interpreter Kate puts a record on the gramophone. Milestones.

The playing of this record instantly transported us both back to our respective childhoods, only difference is that our household didn’t have a gramophone in it.  Kate told me: ‘I remember as a child that there was a gramophone in our home. My parents were very interested in history and vintage objects. I think that is one of the reasons why I have such a passion for the bringing the past alive. Nowadays, in these difficult economic times, people are looking back to a time when everything seemed to be more wholesome, better.’

Costumed interpreter Dickon, as a 1920s road repair workman in his ‘living van’. This van is often on display at outside events and Dickon assures me that the cooking range works really well. I would love to have had a go at cooking on it! Milestones.

I also spoke with another costumed interpreter, Dickon.  Dickon has worked at Milestones for seven years and his specialist areas of interest are transport history and industrial heritage.  I asked Dickon whether he had always been interested in living history?: ‘Yes, very much.  I come from an art and design background originally but inherited my love of transport history from my father who has been collecting vintage cars for over thirty years.  I also own a 1929 Austin 7.  I often attend vintage events in my spare time and have a Wing Commanders uniform that I wear when I am driving my Austin 7.’

Steam roller by Wallis & Steevens, 1927, used for road repairs. Milestones.

Dickon has a number of different characters that he interprets at Milestones, including a 1930s car salesman. However, on the day of my visit his persona was a road repair man from the late 1920s.  Dickon explained that during this period, workmen would travel up and down the country with their steam roller and towed ‘living van’.  I asked Dickon what his favourite exhibit at Milestones was?: ‘The 1903 motorcar by Thornycroft of Basingstoke. It is the oldest Thornycroft motorcar in existence.  It is a 10hp, two-cylinder and has had its bodywork completely restored. Luckily, we had the original drawings for the vehicle which helped considerably in the restoration process. The paintwork is not sprayed but all painted by hand. I particularly like the beautiful wooden spokes on the wheels, such attention to detail. The first owner of this car was Reverend H. A. Acheson-Gray. I haven’t driven the car myself but it is one of my dreams to be able to do so.’

Thornycroft of Basingstoke are probably best known for their shipbuilding, marine engineering and commercial vehicle endeavours.  However, between 1903 and 1912 they manufactured high quality motor cars. If you want to find-out more about Thornycroft’s car industry and read a full history of the 1903 car displayed at Milestones, which includes background on the restoration process, then CLICK HERE. 

Reverend H.A. Acheson-Gray takes his 1903, 10hp, Thornycroft motorcar to be repaired at the local blacksmith. For more information on Britain’s first village garages then you might be interested to read my previous article on the subject. CLICK HERE.

The penny arcade was so much fun! I changed a pound coin for some old-fashioned pennies. This private collection of vintage, penny arcade machines and automata is on loan to Milestones until September 2013.

Vintage penny slot machine. Milestones.

I put my penny in the slot and asked Madam Zasha for a reading. Automata, such as this, were very popular in the eighteenth and nineteenth century.

Madam Zasha gives her verdict.

Milestones is such a wonderful day-out for visitors of all ages who are interested in history and vintage or just want a slice of good old-fashioned nostalgia. There is a well-stocked gift shop with a wide range of history books too and a 1950s style café for you to rest your weary legs.  For adults there is even a working Edwardian pub, Baverstock Arms (but do check its opening times upon arrival).  Alton-born James Baverstock (1741-1815) was a Brewer and thought to be the first person to make use of a hydrometer in the brewing process. In 1769 he married Jane Hinton, daughter of the Reverend John Hinton of Chawton, Hampshire with whom he had a large family and plenty of heirs to carry on his brewery business for him.

If you are looking for somewhere to visit over the Christmas period then the good news is Milestones will be open. The Museum is easily accessible by both car and public transport. I can vouch for the latter as this was how I chose to travel there.  Basingstoke is only forty-five minutes by train from London Waterloo. A shuttle bus (by Courtney Buses www.courtneybuses.com) runs at regular intervals from outside Basingstoke Railway Station to Milestones (fare currently costs £2 return). Because Milestones is all undercover, there is no need to worry about the weather spoiling your visit either.  All in all the perfect day out for the whole family. For further visitor, collection and event information, please CLICK HERE. Admission charges do apply.

Christmas Opening Times

• Sat 22 Dec and Sun 23 Dec: Open 11am–4.45pm
• Mon 24 Dec to Weds 26 Dec: CLOSED
• Thurs 27 to Mon 31 Dec: Weekdays open 10am–4.45pm, weekends 11am–4.45pm
• Tues 1 Jan: CLOSED
• Weds 2 to Sun 6 Jan: Weekdays open 10am–4.45pm, weekends 11am–4.45pm

Normal Opening Times

• Tue–Fri, Bank Holidays, 10am–4.45pm
• Sat and Sun, 11am–4.45pm
• Last admission 3.45pm
• Closed Monday.
  

  I spent ages in Collections Corner and fans of vintage will adore this section. It is chock-full of domestic technology objects. Here are some early twentieth century, electric, cookers.

A surviving rare example of a Tempera Permanent Wave Machine – heat clamp method by Wella. c.1946. Collections Corner. Milestones.

Vintage electric mixers. Collections Corner. Milestones.

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A Taste of History – St. Barbe Museum, Lymington.

‘A Taste of History Exhibition’, St. Barbe Museum, Lymington, Hampshire.

St. Barbe Museum‘s recent exhibition, ‘A Taste of History: Local Food and Farming’ (6th October-17th November 2012) took the visitor on a fascinating journey through the history of British food, from pre-historic times to the 1950s.  The exhibition is part of a year-long project organised by the museum’s staff and supported by a team of dedicated volunteers:

We may think that our obsession with celebrity chefs, new ingredients, food imports and diet are a very modern phenomenon, but food developments have been at the heart of our culture since the beginning of farming in the Stone Age.

( A Taste of History, exhibition panel, 2012)

St. Barbe Museum is located in the historic town of Lymington, which nestles on the edge of The New Forest National Park and hugs the Solent shoreline.  The town’s unique dual location has meant that for many centuries its residents have enjoyed both a marine and carnivorous diet.  In 1079, William the Conqueror (c.1028-1087) established the New Forest as a royal hunting ground and the Domesday Book (1086) even had a separate section for it.  (A Taste of History exhibition, 2012).

One of the former salt houses, still standing today, located on the Salterns near Lymington. The salt boiling houses were last used in 1865. Salt would have been transported to the houses by barges which also brought coal for the salt pan fires.

Lymington once had a thriving salt industry. Before the refrigerator, salt was used to preserve food, particularly meat and the exhibition included a section on its uses.  I was interested to discover that as soon as man stopped hunting salt became an important part of our diet. Previously, meat that had been procured by hunting would normally have been roasted thus ensuring that any salt would automatically be retained in the flesh.  When meat was farmed rather than hunted, boiling became the preferred cooking method. Boiling extracts salt, rendering the meat bland, adding salt to meat improves its taste. The demand for salt began to increase.  Salt was also used in the leather industry for tanning hides and in the treatment of wounds.  Edwardians loved salt pork – cured hams hanging in the pantry were a common sight.

Lymington’s salt industry was well-established by the Stuart period in England (1603-1714).  According to historian Jude James:

A visit to Lymington by the indefatigable Celia Fiennes (1662-1741) in the 1690s provides us with a very detailed description of the salt making processes.  In her account she writes of Lymington as having a few small ships but “the greatest trade is by their salterns” and she gives details of the liquor being conveyed through pipes into iron or copper pans situated in buildings [salt houses] where it was evaporated by furnaces blazing beneath to keep them boiling rapidly.  She states that up to 60 quarters of salt could be made in a single pan beneath which the furnace was kept burning day and night.

(James, J., 2006 [1996], The Salt Industry of Lymington and the Solent Coast, published by Lymington Museum Trust)

By the middle of the eighteenth century there were one hundred and forty-nine active salt pans.  Wealthy local businessman Charles St. Barbe (1750-1826) owned fifteen salt works and forty-eight pans, after salt taxes had been paid, he made a profit of £25,000 (£2.2 million in today’s money).  Salt tax was first introduced in England in 1694 and just over one hundred years later had risen to ten shillings per bushel and in 1805 was fifteen shillings per bushel.  The salt industry in Lymington had declined by the mid nineteenth century and by 1865 the boiling houses on the Salterns were forced to close due to the high cost of coal and cheaper rock salt being produced around Liverpool.

‘A Taste of History’ exhibition panels were full of so many fascinating facts about the history of food and here are some of my favourites examples:

• the first recipe book in Britain was introduced by the Romans in the 1st century AD, De Re Coquinaria by Apicius (I have found a translation of the cookbook on-line, CLICK HERE);
• the Romans were the first to introduce Sumptuary Laws which limited the number of dishes allowable at a meal and banned the eating of stuffed dormice;
• a popular Roman delicacy was boiled flamingo with thick sauce made from dates and spices;
• Roman soldiers were paid some of their wages in salt – salt money or a ‘salarium’ from which the word ‘salary’ derives;
• Romans brought to Britain carrots, cabbage, parsnips, turnips, endive, celery, lettuce, cucumbers, marrow, asparagus, onions, leeks, new varieties of plums, apples, damsons, cherries, herbs such as fennel, rocket, parsley, borage, dill, spearmint, aniseed, hyssop, rosemary, sage and sweet marjoram. That is quite an extraordinary list of food imports, we do have quite a lot to thank the Romans for in terms of improving our palate;
• during the Middle Ages (1066-1485) the diet of a Lord included a number of foods that we would find strange today. Beavers were a popular delicacy and because they swam using their tails they were technically thought of as fish, therefore enabling the Lord to eat them but still not fall foul of the strict fasting rules;
• John Bakere was thought to be the first butcher on Lymington High Street in 1391 and he operated from ‘shambles’ or wooden stallsin the market hall;
  

  Topps Butchers c1900, located at No. 20 High Street, Lymington. Topps were known for their pickled tongue. There was also a slaughterhouse behind the shop. The photograph is in the St. Barbe Museum Collection – 1994.78.

• in Lymington in 1726 butchers were forbidden from throwing guts of slaughtered beasts onto the street on pain of a 3s 4d fine.  Such was the dirt and filfth on the unmade High Street (from general waste, mud, and live dead animals) that in the eighteenth century, ladies would wear pattens, special platformed over-shoes, to protect their shoes and clothing;
  

  Drawing (1784) by Thomas Rowlandson (1756-1827) of the kitchen at the inn at Lymington on the road to Pilewell. Rowlandson visited Lymington in 1784. In the trade directory for that year, Lymington had 4 butchers, 1 fruiterer, 6 bakers, 6 grocers, 2 pastry cooks and a wine merchant. The drawing is in the St. Barbe Museum Collection – LMGLM 2012.31.8.

• in the Medieval period a feast could have up to six thousand guests.  Peacocks were a feast favourite, they were plucked, cooked and sewn back into their feathers before serving.  Layered jellies were made, flowers such as violets and primroses were also used;
• in the seventeenth century mushrooms and runner-beans were introduced from Central America and grown ornamentally, along with bananas from Bermuda and grapefruits (called shaddocks) from the West Indies;
• in 1944, Sway (village close to Lymington) Women’s Institute reported that their Jam Centre that year they had made 193 lbs of A-Standard jam and jelly. Sway WI were obviously a most enterprising group and in 1944 The Rural Meat-Pie Scheme was set-up by one of their members. During its first year of existence Scheme records show that an incredible 28,318 pies were made and sold. This really is a remarkable feat considering food rationingwas in force;
  

  From the Dig for Victory display in the Wartime section of the exhibition.

• after the Second World War farming began to decline. By the end of the 1950s, tractors outnumbered horses by a ratio of two to one and approximately sixty farm workers per day were leaving agricultural employment.

A reversible linen smock which is the same front and back, so it could be turned inside-out when one side became dirty. Smocks fell-out of fashion amongst agricultural workers from the 1850s onwards. This smock is in the St. Barbe Museum Collection.

Throughout this year the Museum organised a large number of educational activities, in particular historical food days, eras and topics included: The Romans; jams and chutney; bread; wartime and the Tudors.  If you regularly follow my blog, then you will have already read my articles on Prehistoric Cooking with Jacqui Wood and An Invitation to a Stuart Banquet. Both of this days were part of this programme of events.

The Victorian farmhouse kitchen exhibit.

I also attended their Victorian food history day.  I took along my great, great grandmother’s copy of Mrs Beeton’s Book of Household Management as well as my china tea set from 1845, some Victorian table linen and a late nineteenth century copper jelly mould.

Victorian kitchenalia, including my tea-set, linen, copper jelly mould and copy of Mrs Beeton’s Book of Household Management.

I loved this object, a ‘memory tickler’, which was part of the Victorian farmhouse display. I think that this old-fashioned style shopping list would still prove popular if it were reproduced today. I’d definitely buy it. I also note that blancmange powder was considered a store cupboard staple then, most interesting.

There were plenty of activities to participate in and a local cook, who specialises in baking historical food, made some very tasty cakes based on original Victorian recipes -  a fill belly cake and a pound cake (see below for recipes).

Costumed museum guide at St. Barbe Museum’s Victorian day.

There were costumed museum guides, lots of vintage recipe books to browse through and an opportunity to make chocolate bon bons as well as a little gift box to take them away in.

The chocolate bon bons and little gift box that I made.

One of the highlights was a reading, by local actor Bruce Clitherow, of extracts from William Charles Retford’s (1875-1970) Memoirs of Growing-up in Ashley.  Retford’s Memoirs provide a wonderful glimpse of rural life in late Victorian Ashley and Burley, two villages not too far from Lymington.  Retford moved to London in 1982 to take-up an apprenticeship as a bow-maker for cellos and violins:

All good things come to an end.  In 1892 Arthur Hill, the violin maker, spent the weekend at the Old House and offered me a job.  By the end of March I was in a third floor back in New Bond Street cleaning fiddles and fitting pegs.  Unhappy and hard up.  After the first week I was taught nothing more for a year. “Thereby hangs a tale,” written but quite unprintable.  Cleaning fiddles was kids play to me.

(For a transcript of Retford’s Memoirs together with a more detailed biography of his extraordinary life, CLICK HERE.)

Local actor Bruce Clitherow reading from William Retford’s Memoirs of Growing-up in Ashley.

To accompany A Taste of History a lovely little book has been produced by staff and volunteers at the museum.  It contains recipes and notes from the exhibition, here is one entry in particular that caught my eye, a recipe for Saffron Bread:

Saffron Bread (A pre-Reformation Lenten bread)

For 1 loaf:

3/4 cups of milk; 12.5mg saffron; 1 packet of dried yeast; 60 ml lukewarm water; 450g strong white bread flour; 10mg salt; 2 eggs, lightly beaten.

Scald the milk with the saffron.  Let it cool.  Dissolve yeast in water. Sift together 300g of flour with the salt, spoon in eggs, milk and yeast mixture and blend.  Add enough flour to prevent it becoming sticky.  Knead until dough is smooth and elastic, adding more flour as needed.  Put in a greased bowl in a warmish place, leave to rise until it has doubled in bulk.  Punch down, shape in a round loaf.  Place on a greased baking sheet, leave to rise until it has again doubled in size.  Bake at 170C (375F) for 25-30 mins. then cool on a rack.

(A Taste of History: Celebrating food and farming throughout the ages, 2012,  St. Barbe Museum & Art Gallery, Lymington)

At the Victorian food history day there were lots of historical recipes to take away and try for yourself which was such a lovely touch. Another nice idea was an opportunity for a recipe swap, you could pin your handwritten family recipes on a noticeboard for others to see. Here a few of my favourite recipes that I discovered:

Eggless Sponge

150g self-raising flour; 5ml baking powder; 65g margarine; 50g sugar; 15ml golden syrup; 125ml milk or milk and water; jam for filling.

Sift the flour and baking powder.  Mix the margarine, sugar and golden syrup until light and soft.  Add a little flour and then a little milk or milk and water and mix it in.  Continue adding the flour and liquid like this until the mixture is smooth.  Grease two 18cm cake tins and sprinkle them lightly with flour.  Divide the mixture between them and bake at 200C, for about 20 minutes or until firm to the touch.  Tip out the tins carefully and spread one cake with jam.  Cover with the other cake.

Fill Belly Cake

2lbs stale bread; 0.5 lbs shredded suet; 1 lb granulated or brown sugar; 1lb mixed dried fruit; 3 eggs; 2 0z butter or margarine; 1 teaspoon mixed spice.

Soak the bread in water then drain and squeeze-out the excess water.  Flake with a fork and add the remaining ingredients. Mix well together and spread the mixture into a greased baking tin.  Dot with butter and bake in a moderate oven for about 2 hours or until nicely browned.  A variation is to make a pastry base, spread it with jam and then cover with the bread pudding mixture.  Bake as before.

Victorian Pound Cake

10 eggs, separated (or 1lb in weight); 1lb sugar; 1lb flour; 1lb currants and candied peel; 1 glass of brandy (optional).

Cream the butter and sugar together.  Mix in the egg yolks. Stir in the egg whites lightly.  Add the currants and peel, then mix in the flour a little at a time and the brandy if you are using it.  Bake for about 2 hours (or one hour if using half quantities).

Vinegar Cake

6oz self-raising flour; 3oz margarine; 3oz sugar; 1/4pt milk; 1tbsp vinegar; 1/2 teaspoon bicarbonate of soda; 3-4oz mixed dried fruit.

Sift the flour. Cream the margarine and sugar.  Pour the milk into a large basin, add the vinegar and bicarbonate of soda; the mixture will rise and froth in the basin.  Blend the flour and vinegar liquid into the creamed margarine and sugar then add the dried fruit.  Put into a greased and flour 7″ tin, bake in a moderate oven for 1 hour.

Seed Cake

3/4 lb flour; 1  1/2 teaspoons baking powder; 2oz lard; 2 oz butter or margarine; 60z brown sugar; 1 egg; 10z candied peel; 1/2 oz caraway seeds; a little grated nutmeg; pinch of salt; about 1/4 pt milk.

Pass the flour and baking powder through a sieve, rub into it the butter and lard, and add all the dry ingredients.  Beat up the egg with the milk, pour this into the cake mixture and mix thoroughly.  Turn into a 6″ x 3″ tin lined with a greased paper (7  1/2″ x 3  1/2″ tin if making double quantities).  Bake for 1  1/2 hours at gas mark 4 (or 2 hrs  30 at gas mark 3 for a double quantity cake).

For more information about visiting St. Barbe Museum, CLICK HERE.

St. Barbe’s next exhibition is ‘Randolph Schwabe: A Life in Art’ which opens on 24th November and runs until 16th February 2013.  Randolph Schwabe (1885-1948) was employed as an official War Artist in both the First and Second World Wars.  He is known for his portrait series ‘Women on the Land’ depicting the Women’s Land Army at work during the First World War. During the Second World War he produced drawings of bomb damage. The exhibition, curated by Dr Gill Clarke MBE, contains a number of works by Schwabe previously unseen.  Schwabe was born in Barton Lancashire in 1885.  He entered the Royal Academy of Art aged fourteen and in 1900 went to Slade School of Fine Art.  He married Gwendolen Rosamund on 19th April 1913 and they had one daughter.

This was my favourite photograph from the exhibition, ladies inspecting one of the new, Creda, electric cookers in the 1920s. This photograph is in the St. Barbe Museum collection.

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Happy 100th Birthday Tudor House & Garden, Southampton

Tudor House and Garden, Southampton as it appears today.

On the 29th July this year, Tudor House and Garden, Southampton celebrated its 100th birthday. The museum was officially opened on the afternoon of Monday, 29th July, 1912, by the Mayor of Southampton Henry Bowyer. The attraction gave a much-needed boost to Southampton’s morale following the sinking of R.M.S. Titanic less than four months prior.

Old poster advertising Tudor House Museum.

In 1912, the museum’s opening hours were 10am to 6pm during the summer and 10am to 4pm in winter, with an admission charge of 6d but free on Tuesdays, Thursday and Saturdays. The museum’s first curator, Mr Nicholas, did not receive payment for his role.  Nicholas worked extremely hard to ensure that the museum was ready for its grand opening. He also organised the transformation of a former cabbage patch behind Tudor House to be turned into an old English garden.  In the 1980s the garden was re-planned by landscape designer Dr Sylvia Landsberg. Dr Landsberg wanted the garden to resemble a Tudor knot garden from the 1500s.

The garden at Tudor House that was designed by Dr Sylvia Landsberg.

Nicholas continued as Honorary Curator for over twenty years. During that time, he used his own money to fund trips to source objects for the museum. He worked tirelessly to assemble the museum’s eclectic range of objects. Eventually, the council appointed a professional curatorial team to manage the collection.

Selection of souvenirs sold at Tudor House museum in the last 100 years.

Unusual objects that were on display when the museum first opened in 1912.

Fireman’s helmet from the Napoleonic era. Before the helmet originally went on display in the museum, it was part of William Spranger’s own collection which was housed in a private museum at King John’s Palace, behind Tudor House.

According to A. G. K. Leonard in The Saving of Tudor House, the museum’s first year of opening was a great success:

The people of Southampton evidently appreciated the town’s first museum.  In September, 1913, the Borough Council received the report of its Estates Committee which included an account by R. E. Nicholas of the first year of Tudor House (ST 13 September 1913): this stated that 18,400 people had signed the visitors’ book there and that “probably quite twice that number had visited the house”….It was also reported that £30.10s. had been taken on “pay days” i.e. 1,220 sixpences…Alderman Bance told the council that in the first few months since its publication 1,958 copies of the history of Tudor House, a booklet by F. J. C. Hearnshaw, had been sold, along with 2,870 of the picture postcards of the house published by the Corporation.

(Leonard, A.G.K., 1987, pp. 27-28)

A Tudor gentleman helps celebrate the museum’s 100th birthday.

To commemorate the centenary, the current museum staff organised a wonderful day at Tudor House on Sunday 29th July, with an entrance fee of 6p! Staff also dressed in Edwardian and Tudor costume.

My attempts at making a mosaic coaster.

Grouting my mosaic coaster.

My finished mosaic coaster.

One of the activities organised by the museum as part of the centenary celebrations was a mosaic workshop in nearby Westgate Hall (formerly known as Tudor Merchant’s Hall).

I took this piece of flint along to be appraised by the archaeologist. I have kept it wrapped-up in a box since I was a child. Had I found a prehistoric axe head? Sadly no, just a nice piece of flint. Oh well, at least it puts that mystery to bed.

An Archaeologist was also on hand in the main museum to help identify any finds brought in.

Over the last five hundred years some of Tudor House’s many interesting owners/occupiers have included:

• Walter and Jane William – Walter inherited Tudor House from his father. Walter was a wealthy merchant who exported wool and cloth and imported salt, wine, leather, oil, fish and woad. When Walter died, Jane inherited the building. Jane married husband number two, Sir John Dawtrey;
• Sir John Dawtrey – Sir John was Overseer of the Port of Southampton and Collector of the King’s Customs. Following Jane’s death he married Isabel Shirley in 1509 and they had a son, Francis, in 1510. Sir John died in 1518;
• Lady Isabel Lyster (formerly Dawtrey). Lady Isabel, Dawtrey’s widow, ran Tudor House for ten years. She was a successful businesswoman who traded in millstones for windmills and watermills. She also rented the Cloth Hall in St. Michael’s Square from 1526 to 1531;
• Sir Richard Lyster (c.1480-1553) - Sir Richard married Lady Isabel in 1528. They became Southampton’s power couple, amassing a huge joint wealth. Sir Richard was a Judge and Lord Chief Justice of England.  He attended Queen Anne Boleyn’s (1501-1536) coronation, riding in the procession beforehand. He also took part in the trial of Sir Thomas More (1478-1535) and was Henry VIII’s (1491-1547) divorce lawyer. During their time in residence at Tudor House, Lord and Lady Lyster had eight servants, a bake house and a dairy. Following Isabel’s death, Sir Richard married Elizabeth Stoke, they had two children, Michael (d. 1551) and Elizabeth;
• William Lankester (1798-1875) – an iron and brass founder and furnishing ironmonger;
  

  Photograph of Tudor House in 1880. Notice G. Cawte’s shop on the left and Pope & Co on the right.

• George Henry Pope – tenant of the northern section of Tudor House and grounds along Blue Anchor Lane from 1868. Pope was a dyer, clothes and furniture cleaner and had a shop at the front of the House. His trade advertisement read: ‘Ladies’ dresses of every description cleaned or dyed. British and foreign shawls, scarfs, & c., cleaned by a process that will ensure the colours being preserved.  Gentlemen’s wearing apparel and servants’ liveries of every description cleaned in a superior style.’ At the height of Queen Victoria’s reign mourning customswere strict. For one year and one day a widow had to wear ‘widow weeds’, the only colour permissible being black. Colour restrictions extended to jewellery and all accessories. After a year and a day she could progress to ‘half mourning’ where she would be permitted to wear a touch of white or grey, then perhaps lavender and after two years full colour could be worn again.  It was customary for a Victorian widow to have her clothing dyed black and after two years re-dyed back to its original colour. Pope offered this popular service to his customers: ‘Articles for mourning dyed on the shortest notice…. The black extracted from silk, satin, Merino, cloth,& Co., and the material dyed to a variety of patterns’;
  

  A selection of tools used by Cawte’s family bookbinding business.

• Henry G. Cawte – opened his family bookbinding business at Tudor House (then known as Old Palace House, 9 St. Michael’s Square) in 1859;
  

  Tools belonging to Eliza Simmonds.

• Eliza Simmonds – a straw-bonnet maker, milliner and dressmaker who took a tenancy of part of Tudor House from 1869-80.  During the first half of Queen Victoria’s (1819-1901) reign the straw plait industrywas an important trade, supplying the flourishing straw-bonnet industry, particularly in Bedfordshire. Straw-bonnets with decorative flourishes were very fashionable. Straw plaiting, used as a basis for the straw-bonnets, was a popular source of income for women living in rural homesteads and a thriving cottage industry developed. It was always easy to spot a straw plait maker, the corner of her lips would be badly scarred as a result of moistening the splints from the straw bundle. If the straw had already been dyed, then her mouth would also be colour-stained;
  

  A pretty Victorian straw bonnet by Eliza Simmonds.

• Josiah George Poole (1818-1897) - Poole had originally lived at Tudor House during the 1850s. He returned again in 1883 to set-up home alongside his business, J. G. Poole & Sons. Poole was an architect and surveyor who worked extensively on local projects including the Masonic Hall in Albion Place and restoration of the south side of the Bargate (1864-5).A. G. K. Leonard writes of the Poole family: ‘….Poole’s large family (he had five children by his first wife and sixteen by his second, although not all survived infancy) gathered for dinner in the Banqueting Hall.’ (Leonard, A.G. K., 1987, p. 4);
  

  Oil painting by V. C. Batalha Reis Ariba, painted in 1921, of Edward Cooper Poole, son of Josiah George Poole. Edward worked with his father and one of his many commissions was to re-design Southampton Royal Pier which opened in 1930.

Oil painting, by an unknown artist, of Mr Spranger, c. 1915. His portrait hangs in one of the upstairs exhibition rooms so that he can continue to survey all that he has created.

William Francis Gummer Spranger (1848-1917)

Without William Spranger there would be no Tudor House museum. He was a public-spirited man and epitome of the Victorian philanthropist.  Tudor House museum is Spranger’s legacy to the people of Southampton and everyone who is passionate about the city’s history and heritage. He brought the entire freehold property of Tudor House and Norman House from W. G. Lankester for £1,450 in 1886. Spranger was educated at Oxford and during his time living in Southampton (from 1893 until his death), took an active interest in local educational matters.  He was a governor and benefactor of Hartley College (now the University of Southampton), Chairman of the Southampton School of Art, president of the Hampshire Field Club 1904-5, the first chairman of the Southampton Record Society and in 1898 was appointed governor of Taunton’s College (now Richard Taunton Sixth Form College) and King Edward VI School. In true story-book style, Spranger’s last death-bed message was to the boys of the Endowed Schools [Taunton's and King Edward VI] – “lead good lives and play straight”.  For his funeral at St. Michael’s, the church troop of boy scouts formed a guard of honour and at the cemetery the path to his grave was lined by boys of Taunton’s and King Edward VI Schools. (Leonard, A.G.K., 1987, pp.10-11)

Old photograph showing interior of Tudor House last century.

Tudor House has undergone a number of substantial restorations during its lifetime. The first being in the early sixteenth century, another under Spranger’s watchful eye between 1898 and 1902, some ten years before the museum finally opened.  The last major restoration took place between 2001 and 2011 when the Museum received £3.5 million of Heritage Lottery Fund Grants (for more information on this please see my article of 28th July 2011. CLICK HERE.)

Spranger said of his restoration of Tudor House:

“….the original building had undergone changes in the course of the centuries which he had no knowledge of when the builders’ men were set to work.  Externally, herring-bone brickwork had been covered over with stucco and characteristic timbering of the Tudor period was hidden in many parts.  Inside, some very remarkable discoveries were made.  Lath and plaster ceilings had been fixed below the original ceilings of panelled oak, great chestnut beams had been similarly hidden, windows blocked up, fire-places altered and many of the principal beauties, as now visible, defaced and despoiled. Every new find was a great temptation to go on and I spent so much money having things put as right as possible again that I was compelled to pull myself up.”

(Leonard, A.G.K., 1987, p. 15)

Tudor House and Garden is such a wonderful place to visit, a true gem in the old town of Southampton City. For visitor information please CLICK HERE.

Montage of old photographs showing the interior of Tudor House museum just after it opened in 1912.

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Britain’s Lost World – Story of St. Kilda

A quick post to let you know that the BBC are currently repeating their fascinating three-part, 2008 series, exploring the history and nature of St. Kilda, Britain’s Lost World – Story of St. Kilda.  An intrepid team consisting of historian Dan Snow, wildlife presenter Kate Humble and climber and biologist Steve Backshall spend ten days living on St. Kilda investigating this remarkable outpost. For more information on the BBC series CLICK HERE.

If you would like to read more about the history of St. Kilda, CLICK HERE for my earlier article.

Episode one is on at 12.30am, Tuesday 17th July, episode two, Tuesday 23rd July, BBC Four, 7.30pm. If you are resident outside of the UK, then good news is you can buy the series DVD from Amazon -  CLICK HERE.

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P & O Grand Event Southampton Tuesday 3rd July 2012

Tuesday 3rd July 2012 will go down as a milestone in maritime history, it was P & O Cruises’ The Grand Event, a celebration of the shipping line’s 175th anniversary.  The seven ships that make-up P & O’s entire fleet of vessels, arrived in the early hours of Tuesday morning, one-by-one alongside Southampton’s Eastern and Western Docks.  Here are a few quick facts about each of the ships:

Ventura, Arcadia, Aurora and Oriana berthed in Western Dock, Tuesday 3rd July 2012.

1. Adonia – The smallest vessel at 30,000 tonnes. Entered service with P & O in May 2011. It accommodates 826 passengers and named by Dame Shirley Bassey in Southampton. Captain = Julian Burgess.
2. Ventura – Entered service in 2008, weighs 116,000 tonnes, can accommodate 3,100 passengers, has five swimming pools and named by Dame Helen Mirren in Southampton.  Captain = Paul Brown.
3. Arcadia - Entered service in April 2005, weighs 86,799 tonnes and named by Dame Kelly Holmes in Southampton. Captain = Ian Walters.
4. Aurora – Entered service in April 2000, weighs 76,000 tonnes and named by the Princess Royal in Southampton.  It has ten public decks and can carry 1,950 passengers. Captain = Neil Turnbull.
5. Oriana – Entered service in April 1995, weighs 69,000 tonnes and named by the Queen in Southampton.  It can carry 1,928 passengers. Captain = Trevor Lane.
6. Azura – Entered service in April 2010, weighs 115,055 tonnes and named by ballerina Darcey Bussell.  It has fourteen passenger decks and can accommodate 3,096 passengers. Captain = Keith Dowds.
7. Oceana – Entered service in 2003, weighs 77,000 tonnes and named by the Princess Royal. Captain = Simon Terry.

Adonia.

Ventura.

Arcadia.

Aurora.

 

Oriana.

Originally named The Peninsular Steam Navigation company, in 1837 the firm was awarded the contract delivering Royal Mail to the Iberian Peninsula.  In 1840, the company changed its name to the Peninsular and Oriental Steam Navigation Company (P & O) and had its Royal Mail contract extended to the East.  In 1918, P & O acquired the Orient Line and in 1974 the company brought Princess Cruises, an American firm, thus becoming P & O Princess Cruises.  In 2003, P & O Princess Cruises merged with Carnival Corp and plc.

An enthusiastic small crowd brave the dreadful weather in Mayflower Park.

At 5.15pm, Tuesday the 3rd, a small but keen crowd of us gathered at Mayflower Park Southampton to witness the, never to be repeated, spectacle of all seven of the fleet’s vessels departing at the same time.  In Mayflower Park, only five of the seven ships were visible, Azura and Oceana were berthed in the Eastern Docks. The dreadful weather did make photography pretty tricky but my trusty camera did not let me down. However, the free commemorative flags remained rolled-up in my bag.  Juggling a brolly, camera AND flag would have been tricky given the violent gusts of wind and driving rain. The Red Arrows scheduled fly past was cancelled and firework displays were reduced to a few puffs of grey smoke barely visible through the blanket of grey drizzle.  This was all a bit of shame, since the event had taken eighteen months to plan and clearly well-organised but of course no-one can predict the English weather. It reminded me of the Queen’s Diamond Jubilee River Pageant, when twelve members of the Royal College of Music Chamber Choir battled against the elements, demonstrating great British pluck, to perform Land of Hope and Glory, Rule Britannia and the national anthem, despite being soaked to the skin and on the verge of hypothermia.

My commemorative flags.

However, spirits were high among the few who braved the weather conditions in Mayflower Park. Enthusiastic passengers aboard the vessels were waving furiously whilst onboard music was pipped over each of the ships’ PA systems.  I think I would have been in good spirits if had been aboard one of these fine ships, happy in the knowledge that within twenty-four hours I would be in the Mediterranean and away from the never-ending torrential rain currently plaguing the British Isles. I do hope the weather improves for the Olympics!

Finally, at 5.15pm, the Adonia slipped her moorings at Berth 40 and The Grand Event was underway.

Some of the flotillas that supported the P & O vessels.

 

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Southampton’s Wool & Cloth Heritage

The Wool House, Bugle Street, Southampton, Hampshire

Before you begin reading this article, you may find it useful to open the Tudor Revels’ website in a separate tab.  The interactive map on the home page is very easy to use and depicts the layout of Southampton during the Tudor period.  It will help you  locate some of the buildings I have mentioned here.  For the map, CLICK HERE.

The Wool House.

Southampton has prospered on the profits of the wool and wine trade. The wool trade in Southampton reached its height in the thirteenth century and a majority of townspeople derived their income from it. One such merchant was Thomas of Andover, flourishing between 1260 and c1280. Thomas built himself a stone house, with a vaulted cellar, on the west side of the High Street from the proceeds of wool trading.  Southampton’s location was ideal, near to the sheep rearing districts of Hampshire and the Wiltshire Downlands.

The Wool House.

In order to ensure smooth running of its flourishing wool trade, the town officials created a number of key roles. In 1325, a Peysage, an officer of the Crown, was appointed as principal wool weigher.  In 1327, Geoffrey Hogheles was made collector of wool customs.  The wool would have been assembled at this time by a guild of packers, made-up exclusively of women. In 1503, the guild became a corporation sponsored organisation, consisting of twelve women.   In French Street is The Weigh House ‘weyhous’, a building constructed in the early thirteenth century. The Weigh House contained the town’s weigh beam, called the Tron. The Tron was a large wooden beam balance, robust enough to deal with larger bales of wool.  The beam was controversial amongst merchants and susceptible to misuse, finally leading to its withdrawal in c1352.  Unfortunately, The Weigh House was gutted in German bombing raids during World War Two, only the outer shell now remains.

The Weigh House, French Street, Southampton.

The Weigh House.

The Weigh House.

Wool houses were erected in the town and one survives today, at the end of Bugle Street. This Wool House was built in the fourteenth century by Cistercian monks from Beaulieu Abbey, primarily as a storehouse. It has a Spanish chestnut roof and curious cylindrical buttresses along the Bugle Street side.  It appears in fourteenth century records as ’wolhous’. During Elizabethan times, the Wool House was known as Alum Cellar. Alum (potassium aluminium sulphate) is used in conjunction with cream of tartar to create a mordant for natural dyes. In wool it enhances the colours yellow and red. Mordant is derived from word ‘mordere’, meaning ‘to bite’. In the wool dyeing process, a mordant prepares the wool to accept colour.  It is believed that Alum first came to Southampton in 1451, brought over in large quantities by the Genoese.  Other types of mordant that have been used include urine and leaves.

Walter Fetplace (d. 1449) was a Southampton merchant who lived in the old Moundenard tenement on High Street.  He was Mayor of Southampton in 1426, 1432, 1439 and 1444.  He made his living buying dyes from Italian merchants and selling them on to dyers working in Salisbury and Winchester.  He imported mordants and dye-stuffs but also traded in salt, fish, fruit and wine.

Watergate, Southampton (front view).

Watergate, Southampton.

Watergate, Southampton (interior).

Watergate, Southampton (interior).

On the most southerly point of the old Southampton Walls is the Watergate, constructed towards the end of the fourteenth century. The building was largely demolished in 1804 but parts of one of the drum towers still survives.  The Watergate stands at the end of Porters’ Lane, an accessway that ran behind the line of the old town wall.  Porters’ Lane was also called, Le Chayne and Wool Street. This was where many of the town’s wool stores could be found.

Canute’s Palace, Porters’ Lane, Southampton.

Canute’s Palace, Porters’ Lane, Town Quay, Southampton.

Also in Porters’ Lane, are the remains of Canute’s Palace which is a late twelfth century merchant’s house. It stood two storeys high with a hall on the upper storey. The upper-hall may have also doubled as a counting-house. The building was more likely to have been used for commercial purposes rather than residential. King Canute did not live here and the building was not a palace, however it is still a fine example of a Norman merchant’s house.

Canute’s Palace, Southampton.

Canute’s Palace.

Canute’s Palace.

Canute’s Palace.

The name ‘Canute’s Palace’ was first given to the building by Sir Henry Englefield (1752-1822) in his 1801 publication A Walk Through Southampton. For more information on this fascinating area of old Southampton please see the Friends of Town Quay Park’s website.  CLICK HERE.

The fourteenth century was a relatively prosperous time for the wool trade in Southampton but there were several events that intermittently slowed down its progress.  Firstly, the Raid of 4th October, 1338, when fifty galleys landed in port, sacked, looted and extensively destroyed the town.  The town’s Seals were stolen by the invaders too. It is alleged that French and Genoese pirates stole the Tron from The Weigh House.  There were reports of local citizens joining-in with the looting of the town’s wool and wine stocks. In Rev. J. Silvester Davies’, A History of Southampton (1883), he describes the Raid:

Early on Sunday morning, October 4th, a numerous fleet of galleys, crowded with Normans, Picards, Genoese, and Spaniards, landed its horde at the south-western quarter of the town while the inhabitants were at mass.  The burgesses fled before them; the town was at their mercy.  They plundered and burnt at pleasure, and hung some of the townsfolk in their own houses; but on the following morning a rally took place, and ‘aliens’ were driven to their ships….Its results we have seen elsewhere in the busy erection of walls and improvements of the town….The conduct of the burgesses had brought disgrace not only on the town, but on the whole king’s realm, and the town had accordingly been taken from them.

(Davies, Rev. J. S., 1883, p. 466)

Following the Raid, trade was severely disrupted and a form of martial law imposed on Southampton by Edward III (1312-1377). Davies describes the post-Raid actions taken by the King:

….immediately after which the town was seized in the king’s hands, in active censure on the mayor [Nicholas Sampson 1337 & 1338], bailiffs, and burgesses, who had fled before the enemy..On November 13th, among other steps taken, John de Hampton, Walter de Estcote, and others, were commissioned to inquire into the loss of the king’s wools by fire; how much, and of what quality, had been left after the enemy had retired.  Under one influence or other the mayor and bailiffs recovered heart, and humbly begged for the restoration of their town and liberties; receiving them back on March 15th, 1339, apparently on no harder terms than that they should do their duty in future, and hold the town vigorously against the foe; and orders occur to John de Flete, clerk, keeper of arms in the Tower of London, to send forthwith all kinds of weapons for the use of the town.

(Ibid. p. 79)

The military intervention included establishing a garrison in the town.  The wool trade continued with restrictions and there were now less merchants visiting the port.  Secondly, the Black Death, arrived in Southampton the latter part of 1348. The epidemic resulted in many human and animal deaths, including flocks of sheep.

Replica medieval cargo vessel, West Quay, Southampton. This vessel would have been used by the English to export wool and import wine from Southampton to the continent.  Italian merchants used galleys and carracks to export goods.

The town’s wool economy began to improve in the first half of the fifteenth century. Approximately one thousand sacks of wool were now being exported from Southampton to the continent each year and by the end of the century this figure had increased considerably. Southampton became a collecting centre for wools en-route from the West-Country to Italy. Wool and cloth continued to be exported to the continent on Florentine State galleys and Genoese carracks. However, the former ceased to appear in port after 1478 and from 1509, due to wars in Italy, the latter ceased to visit too.

In the mid fifteenth century the Wool House was let to a succession of Italian and Portuguese merchants. At this time about fifty foreign merchants were registered in town, from Flanders, the Baltic, Spain, France and Brittany. The influx of alien merchants did not always have a positive impact on the town’s wool trade. In 1455, a group of Italian merchants arrived in port and proceeded to travel throughout the surrounding countryside, purchasing wools and woollen cloth from local artisans for a price less than the going rate.  This practice of undercutting, saw the cost of woollen cloth fall considerably in town.  Regulations were swiftly put in place to counteract these unscrupulous activities. Foreign merchants were restricted from purchasing wool, woolfells and cloth except in London, Hampton or Sandwich.

Medieval Merchant’s House, French Street, Southampton.

In French Street (No. 58), there still survives a fine example of a medieval, timber-framed, merchant’s house, a Capital Messuage. The interior has been restored by English Heritage to resemble a typical merchant’s house in Southampton, c1350, although the building was constructed c1290 by wine merchant John Fortin.

Steps to the undercroft/cellar at the Medieval Merchant’s House, Southampton.

The house has a stone-vaulted cellar or undercroft which can be accessed at street level and above that a shop which would have opened directly onto the street.

Medieval Merchant’s House, showing shop shutters.

The windows of the shop were unglazed and had shutters that could be let down to provide extra counter space. On the upper floor, there are two large bed-chambers located at the back and front of the house, connected by a cross-passage over the hall below.

A wealthy Portuguese merchant, Roger Machado, flourished in the town between 1486 and 1497.  During this period he lived in a house on Simnel Street (tenements 423 and 424) which was full of fine Venetian cristallo glass, majolica ware, Italian pottery, exquisite fabrics, linen, pewter and barrels of wine.

North Italian majolica jug, late 1400s early 1500. Exhibit from Tudor House and Garden, Southampton, Hampshire.

Machado was appointed Searcher of Customs on 21st September, 1485 and town Burgess in 1490.  He became a herald to Henry VII (1457-1509) and entertained the king at his house in Simnel Street. He died in 1510.

A member of Tudor re-enactment group, The Hungerford Household.

In 1532, trade with Italy declined due to changes in England’s commercial policy whereby trade and export of wool to the continent was actively discouraged and eventually banned. The outcome of the policy meant wool was now retained in England to be woven into cloth. Woven woollen cloth in the Tudor period was lighter in texture than traditional Medieval broadcloth.  Petticoats in Tudor times were made out of Worsted wool cloth, hand dyed with madder.  The swollen madder roots produce a red dye that reacts with the temperature and mineral content of water.  The main chemical compound of madder is Alizarin.  Another popular type of cloth in the Tudor period was woollen cloth of a ‘Kersey‘ weight.  Kersey cloth was light and hand dyed with indigo for use in everyday clothing.

St. Julien French Church, Winkle Street, Southampton. Associated with the Huguenot community.

By 1558, England’s weaving industry was flourishing. In the 1560s, Huguenot refugees fleeing persecution in Catholic countries, introduced to Southampton a new type of woollen cloth called serge.  Serge is a type of twill weave fabric that is relatively cheap and easy to produce. The fabric produced in Southampton was known as the Hampton broad serge woollen cloth. In 1609, a company of sergemakers, sergeweavers and woolcombers was formed.  Membership required payment of a £5 fine and completion of a seven-year apprenticeship.  In 1616, articles and orders of the company received the Town Seal.  Unfortunately, the company did not last and in 1619 was dissolved by consent of all members. A new corporation was formed in 1657 and sealed by charter on 24th July of the same year.  The cloth was woven in town and often sent to either Winchester or Romsey to be hand-finished and dyed.  If the cloth required a more expensive dye, it was sent to London.

Entrance to St. Julien Church, Southampton.

St. Julien Church, Southampton.

Huguenot refugees Phillipe and wife Judith Delamotte (sometimes spelt De la Motte) fled Tournai in Belgium in 1586 subsequently settling in Southampton.  Phillipe was an Elder of the Huguenot community in Southampton and had close connections with St. Julien French Church in Winkle Street.  The Elders were similar to Vestry members in the Anglican churches. Phillipe’s main occupation was a clothier and he ran a workshop assisted by his wife Judith.  After her husband’s death, Judith carried on the business, spinning raw sheep’s wool into strong woollen yarn in readiness to be woven into cloth.  Unusually for a widow, Judith carried on her husband’s business until c1638 and took a prominent role in the town guild.  She died in 1640.

Woollen Cloth Hall (now Westgate Hall), Westgate, Southampton.

Southampton had a Woollen Cloth Hall which was originally built in St. Michael’s Square c1400 and stood two storeys high. On the top floor wool and woollen cloth were stored.  The covered, open-arcaded, ground floor housed the fish market.  Throughout the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries, the Cloth Hall was leased to a townsman whose job it was to look after its day-to-day running and keep the infrastructure in good repair.  In exchange, he would be entitled to pocket the dues owed to the City by merchants who stored and sold their cloth there.  This was not as straightforward as it may sound for the Hall’s lessee.  Many merchants tried to evade the town duties levied on cloth sold at the Hall and opted to trade on the black market, selling cloth throughout the countryside around Southampton instead.  In 1552, regulations were tightened and it did become difficult to trade woollen cloth anywhere but The Cloth Hall.

Woollen Cloth Hall (now Westgate Hall), Southampton.

The Cloth Hall was dismantled in 1634 and rebuilt a little further toward the Quay at Westgate. During the following three hundred years, the Hall functioned as a private building, owned by the City and leased out as a warehouse. In the 1970s it became a public lecture hall and until recently was known as Tudor Merchants Hall.  It is now called Westgate Hall.

The Tudor Revels’ Database Comes in Handy….

I did a quick search, using Tudor Revels’ fantastic new database of Tudor citizens who flourished in Southampton between 1485-1603.  I was interested in those who were associated with the wool trade. I typed-in key words ‘wool’, ‘cloth’, ‘weaver’ and ‘felt’. Below are the results of this search:

Cristoforo Ambruogi (Italian – also known as Christopher Ambrose) (flourished 1462-1510). Merchant Factor. Italian national (Florence) and lived in the Parish of All Saints, Holy Rood. He owned a number of ships. He leased the Wool House, at the end of Bugle Street, ‘a barn near God’s house, lofts over Le Chayne, marketplace in St. Michael’s Square, cellar beneath St. John’s Church. Trading in muscatel, fine wines, confectionary, fruit, alum, cloth of gold.’ ’1462 came to serve as Clerk to the Florentine Factor Angelo de’Aldobrans at West Hall.’ He was mayor 1486-7 and again in 1497-8. West Hall was a large medieval capital tenement at no. 8 Bugle Street.  West Hall was the location of the Edward VI Grammer School from 1696.

Rawlyn Pole (flourished 1489-1490) – Weaver.  1498-9 ‘town’s part for him to join the weavers 10s.’

Richard Blamford (flourished 1498-1524) – Weaver.  He traded crest cloth, woad and oakum. 1521-2 ‘his servant stole some wool.’ 1498-9 ‘craft fine weaver towns part 4s’.

Elizabeth Burgess (flourished 1503) - Woolpacker.  ’Warden of all female woolpackers, membership of twelve women.’ She was married to Richard Burgess.

Mr Corell (alias Curll) (flourished 1505-6) – Weaver. 1505-6 ‘paid 5s to set up as a weaver.’

Lenard Coleman (flourished 1517-1522) – Weaver. 1521 ‘sent as an archer on King’s French Campaign, prest money and conduit money 12d, given 3s towards his sword.’

John Christmas (flourished 1518-1534) – Clothier. Lived in the Parish of All Saints. In 1533-4 ‘Involved in a fray and bloodshed with Pryme fined 9d between them.  Same year victim of a fray by Edward Bartholomew.’

William Chandeler (flourished 1521) -Weaver. 1521 ‘went as an archer for the King.’

John Brooke (flourished 1532-1533) – Weaver.  1532-3 ‘tenant of John Walsh for weavers craft fine 6s 8d’.

Athony Bonaventure (flourished 1549-1550) – Weaver.  1549-50 ‘craft fine to be a weaver 4s’.

John Adeane (English – flourished 1550-1596) – Woollen Draper. English national and lived in the Parish of All Saints, Holy Rood.  He had two children, Richard and John.

John Coson (French – flourished 1561) – Woolcomber.  French national and lived in the Parish of All Saints, Holy Rood. ‘Described as having a wooden leg’.  In 1577 ‘reported for trying to kiss Margaret Smith at three in the afternoon whilst she was making beds in her mistresses house.’

John Bullack (flourished 1582-1600). Hat and Feltmaker. Son of John Bullack who was Mayor of Southampton in 1588.

Richard Allen (flourished 1605). Sergemaker.

Woollen Cloth Hall (now Westgate Hall), Southampton.

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Hurst Castle – Hampshire

Earlier on this year, when we had summer weather in the middle of winter, I visited Hurst Castle. The castle is located on the seaward end of a shingle spit approximately 3/4 of a mile from the Isle of Wight.  It is possible to reach the castle by foot, from nearby Milford-on-Sea. Although, the Milford-on-Sea option comes with a stunning walk, it can be hard going across the banks of shingle and is about a three-mile round trip.  Alternatively, you can take the Hurst Castle Ferry from nearby Keyhaven. It is possible to mix and match your modes of transport, walking one way and using the ferry for the other part of your journey.  I took the ferry both ways and am glad that I did, if only to save all my energy for exploring this hauntingly beautiful location.

Hurst Point Lighthouse, view from ferry jetty.

There is a charge for each ferry trip and a modest entrance fee to the castle. English Heritage members do not pay the castle entrance fee.

Hurst Point Lighthouse.

Entry to the castle is through a pair of gates into the west wing. This section of the castle was completed in 1873.

The day-to-day management of the Castle has an unusual but nevertheless successful set-up.  It is a partnership between a committed group of volunteers and English Heritage:

The Friends of Hurst Castle was formed in 1986 to act as a support group to a local site belonging to English Heritage. At that time the Castle was managed by English Heritage, but since May 1996 there has been joint management; with English Heritage still in charge of the fabric of the building and general policies and the Local Management, Hurst Castle Services, running the everyday management and services.

                                           Extract from the official Hurst Castle website 

The central tower, Tudor Castle. There was once a walkway connecting the tower to the north-west bastion, you can see the blocked doorway where this walkway would have been.

Hurst Castle has defended the western entrance to the Solent since the sixteenth century.  The Tudor castle was built between 1541 and 1544 for Henry VIII as part of an extensive programme of coastal defences.  Following Henry’s divorce from his first wife, Catherine of Aragon, England found itself vulnerable to invasion from France and the Holy Roman Empire.  The castle entrance on the west side had a portcullis and a drawbridge over a moat.  The moat was filled-in in 1861.

On each floor there were fireplaces and a toilet. When the garrison was first operational in 1544, the inhabitants included: a captain; his deputy; a porter; a master gunner; eight soldiers and eleven additional gunners. Brass and iron guns; handguns; bows and arrows were all used to defend the garrison. In the reign of Elizabeth I, threat of invasion from Spain was high. In 1588 the threat was realised. Although, on this occasion mother nature rather than military might defended the garrison from an attack.  A fierce storm blew the Armada past the Isle of Wight and away from Hurst Castle thus negating the need for military intervention.

Charles I spent two and a half weeks imprisoned here in December 1648 before proceeding to his trial and execution at Whitehall. During the Napoleonic wars the castle underwent extensive modernisation. In the 1860s and 1870s two huge casemated wings were added and in both World Wars the castle was garrisoned.  In the Second World War, 162 men were stationed here, men serving in the 129 Coast Battery Royal Artillery.

World War 2 searchlight recently restored by Hurst Castle volunteers.

World War 2 ammunition hoist for transporting the twin 6 PDR gun up onto the roof.

Today, you can still see the laundry room and two bathrooms that were installed in WWII for the men.

Bathroom installed during World War 2.

 

Artefacts found at Hurst Castle from World War 2. On the left-hand side is a 1940s Thermos Flask.

World War 2 Drying Room.

The Lamp Room.

There is one very special historical gem that must not be missed on any visit to Hurst Castle, The Garrison Theatre.  It is believed to be the only surviving ENSA theatre from WWII still in existence in the UK. 

Service Personnel arriving at a Garrison Theatre elsewhere in the UK. The Garrison Theatre at Hurst Castle is exactly the same as it was when the Royal Artillery left after World War 2 and this is what makes it so unique.

 

Interior of Hurst Castle’s Garrison Theatre.

The Theatre was built in a former Victorian casement and above the proscenium arch you can still see the insignia of the Royal Artillery.

Shows are occasionally put-on during the summer months.  For more information on this fascinating little theatre, including archive footage and interviews with former all-round entertainer, Betty Hockey CLICK HERE. Bournemouth-based Betty, now in her nineties, was once a member of The ‘Non-Stops’ Concert Party that performed for the troupes at The Garrison Theatre.  For Betty’s oral history testimony from her time as one of The ‘Non-Stops’, CLICK HERE.

Another good reason for taking the ferry to Hurst Castle is the arrival experience. As you approach the castle jetty, on your left is the magnificent Hurst Point Lighthouseand adjacent keepers’ cottage, the latter now used for holiday lets.

The Lighthouse Keeper’s cottage on Hurst Spit.

Hurst Point is one of three lighthouses on Hurst Spit. The first lighthouse to have been built on the spit was in 1784-86, the Hurst Tower, to the west of the castle. This early lighthouse is no longer in existence. Construction on Hurst Point Lighthouse began in 1865 and was first lit in 1867 becoming fully automated in 1923. The lighthouse is also known as the high light and stands at twenty-six metres tall. It is still working today, helping ships to navigate The Shingles, a large submerged shingle bank, as well as preventing nighttime tragedy by assisting sailors to pass safely along the Needles Channel. The light emitted is a white light, visible from all angles.  In order that sailors can judge their position correctly Hurst Point Lighthouse emits a narrow white light at a lower level from the full beam and a red light to the north of it and a green light to the south. The community at Hurst was once thriving and on approach you would have seen sheds for fishermen’s nets, a herring-drying house, coastguard cottages, inns and soldiers’ married quarters.  In 1863, 135 adults and 28 children lived there.

The low lights at Hurst Castle, viewed from the ferry jetty.

There are two more lighthouses at the castle itself, both low lights.  One built on a red, square, metal gantry attached to the wall of the Castle, dating from 1910-11 and another a little further along the same wall, dating from 1865. This latter lighthouse once had a conical roof. The two low lights have now been decommissioned.

The 1910-11 low light lighthouse at Hurst Castle.

There are a number of, permanent, mini-exhibitions at the castle: Association of Lighthouse Keepers Exhibition; Trinity House Lighthouse Exhibition; Friends of Hurst Exhibition Room and The Hurst Spit Exhibition.  The Trinity House Exhibition is maintained by an additional group of volunteers.  For more information on this extraordinary castle, CLICK HERE.

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Queen’s Diamond Jubilee – The Three Queen Salute Southampton

Cunard’s Queen Elizabeth in the front and Queen Victoria behind. Mayflower Park, Southampton, Tuesday 5th July 2012.

If you celebrated the Queen’s Diamond Jubilee over the last five days then I hope you had a wonderful time doing so, despite the pretty awful weather.  I thought I would bring you images from one of my highlights, the Cunard Three Queens Diamond Jubilee in Southampton, Hampshire.  We got up at 4.45am yesterday and made our way down to Mayflower Park armed with a flask of coffee and camera.  It really was incredible and worth the ridiculously early start, luckily the rain stayed away for this event.

Cunard’s Queen Victoria.

A large and good-natured crowd turned-up at Mayflower Park to greet the three Queens and experience this once in a lifetime opportunity. When we arrived at 5.15am, the Queen Elizabeth was already in position at City Terminal to start the bow-to-bow configuration.  The Queen Victoria tucked herself behind the Queen Elizabeth and the majestic Queen Mary 2 passed by them both, saluting and creating a Three Bow formation. The Queen Mary 2 continued on to Ocean Terminal.  The water was full of firetugs and flotillas, a mini-river pageant without all the royal bling.  All three ships sailed out of Southampton by 11pm that evening.

Cunard’s Queen Elizabeth on the right and in the distance Cunard’s Queen Mary 2.

Queen Mary 2 with firetugs and flotillas.

Well wishes to the Queen from Cunard’s Queen Mary 2.

The event was the perfect precursor to P & O Cruises Grand Event, which celebrates 175 years of the company’s heritage and takes place on Tuesday 3rd July 2012, from 6pm, in Southampton.  On 3rd July, all seven of Cunard’s cruise ships will come together, in one place, for the very first time and then sail out of Southampton on their respective cruises. The ships taking part will be: Adonia; Arcadia; Aurora; Azura; Oceana; Oriana and Ventura.

Cupcakes I made as gifts for my neighbours to celebrate the Queen’s Diamond Jubilee.

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