Category Archives: History

The Vegetable that Won the War

20 Replies

The Vegetable that Won the War

“Les carrottes sont cuites, je répète, les carrottes sont cuites.”

For those of you who still remember a bit of the French you learned at school, yes, I have just informed you that the carrots are cooked. It comes from an old French saying based on cookery. In a stew, the carrots are the last vegetable to cook, once that is done the stew is ready. In French this has developed into an expression meaning that something is completed and nothing can undo it. If you were in the French Resistance and had heard that message on the BBC on June 5 1944, you would have known that the invasion was coming next day.

I was actually looking for information of frozen carrots when I found that snippet about D-Day. The hot weather, and thoughts of healthy eating, brought tales of wartime ice cream substitutes to mind. For a moment, I thought of making some authentic WW2 frozen carrots and eating them as a healthy alternative to ice cream. It wasn’t one of those lasting thoughts.

In 1914 we were caught out, as we imported 66% of our food from abroad. In April 1917, despite the limited capabilities of Great War U-Boats, we were reduced to six week’s supply of wheat, We weren’t any better in 1939, with 70% of our food coming from abroad. It’s 38% these days, in case you were wondering. We were, however, more experienced in the ways of rationing, shortages and blockades, and were much better placed to cope with wartime constraints. By the end of the war people were actually healthier on average than they had been at the beginning.

A number of old-fashioned vegetables made a comeback, such as Good King Henry, also known as Poor Man’s Asparagus or Lincolnshire Spinach. It can be eaten as young stalks or as mature leaves and its pollen has been found in Neolithic, Bronze Age and Roman sites. It comes from the same family as Fat Hen (now considered a weed), spinach and (more fashionably) quinoa. It is shade tolerant, could be grown almost anywhere, is self-seeding and can be grown as a cut and come again crop – all useful qualities when you are struggling for productive space. As a general rule, though I have eaten Good King Henry and Fat Hen, there is a reason they were replaced by spinach – the leaves are small so you need to pick a lot, and they are high in oxalic acid, which can be a problem. Having said that, it is packed with iron, which was seen as a good thing during the war as it prevented anaemia in female factory workers, a major concern in the literature of rationing.

Other vegetables assumed a more important role in the garden. Kale, currently experiencing a revival in fashion has always been grown in the north, where it stands up to the weather better than cabbage. It is a tough plant, has a long growing season, is resistant to pests and contains more calcium than milk, so was particularly good for young children. It is also one of the few brassicas that pigeons won’t eat. Other vegetables like swedes, once seen as animal food, became more widely eaten, being able to grow in poor conditions (including bomb sites) and containing more vitamin C than oranges. Parsnips were also seen as important – storing well in the ground, providing sweetness and being a high energy food, with more calories per pound than potatoes.

But out of all the vegetables, the carrot stands out. Potatoes had Potato Pete, and carrots had Doctor Carrot, but only carrots had cartoon characters drawn by Disney – Carroty George, Clara and Pop Carrot. They were also the only vegetable that helped shoot down German bombers in the Blitz, by enabling our airmen to see better in the dark.

Well, that was certainly what my mother told me when she was making me eat them as a small child. It isn’t really true though, carrots can help with night adaption, but only in people suffering from Vitamin A deficiency. To me “Cat’s Eyes” Cunningham was every bit as important as Douglas Bader and Biggles in my mental list of aviation heroes. Cunningham, it is said, was less than delighted with the publicity and the nickname.

This was not the first time my parents lied to me about nutrition. My hair, for instance, never did curl, despite my consumption of large amounts of burnt toast. It was just a propaganda story to confuse the Germans about the increasing losses to their night bombers. It might even have worked, but as the Germans already had airborne radar by 1941 they probably had a good idea of what was happening. It was also put forward as a cure for “Blackout Blindness”. This was just another of those wartime myths – “Blackout Blindness” wasn’t actually a medical condition, it’s just a tendency to walk into things when there are no street lights. However, lots of people were being killed and injured in the dark and any hope of relief was good for morale.

In December 1940 the Ministry of Agriculture sent out a press release. “If we included a sufficient quantity of carrots in our diet, we should overcome the fairly prevalent malady of blackout blindness.”

The truth was that carrots were in plentiful supply and the Government needed to encourage people to eat them. By 1942 the Dig for Victory campaign plus increased farm production gave us a surplus of 100,000 tons of carrots, and the race was on to find a way to use them. carrots. One BBC employee wrote that they could always tell when carrots were available in quantity, because there would be a press release from Dr Carrot – anything that increased the consumption of carrots was welcome to Government departments

In January 1942 they suspended the restrictions of the Home Grown Carrots (1941 Crop) (Control) Order and allowed growers to wholesale their produce free from restriction. Before this, carrot growers with more than an acre of carrots had only been allowed to sell to the National Vegetable marketing Co Ltd. Despite this relaxation, carrot growing as a farmer with over an acre of carrots was quite a complex business with different rules applied if selling them for animal feed, and depending on the time of sowing. It must have been easy to get the details wrong, In September 1941 the Ministry of Food brought 2,501 prosecutions for breach of food control orders, 2,280 were successful.

The market reports for Northern Ireland in 1942 indicate that, despite the surpluses, home grown carrots were insufficient to satisfy the market and English carrots had to be imported to fill the need, highlighting what a complex business feeding a nation can be.

Apart from being an ice cream substitute and a vegetable, a propaganda tool and a cartoon character, carrots could be used as a jam ingredient. Carrot jam had been appearing to cook books for over six hundred years by the time war broke out. There were many recipes for it in Victorian cookery books. However, most of the recipes called for the juice and zest of oranges and lemons. Even one of the official wartime recipes uses them. In wartime Britain oranges were in short supply (and reserved for children), and lemons were virtually non-existent. I assume that it’s possible to make carrot jam without them, but I also assume it is not as pleasant to eat as the modern recipe suggestions on wartime food websites.

The same is true for carrot cake. The 1940s version is a small cake, and uses a few spoonfuls of grated carrot to add sweetness in place of sugar. It is not at all like the monster modern carrot cake. I just selected a modern recipe at random – the cake takes 390g (nearly 14 ounces) of sugar and four eggs. The average ration allowance per person was 8 oz of sugar and one egg a week. Frosting for the modern cake takes another 140g (5 oz) of sugar, though it was illegal, after August 1940, to put sugar on the outside of any “cake, biscuit, bun, pastry, scone, bread, roll or similar article, after baking.” For the duration of the war, ornate icing on cakes was replaced by a cardboard box placed over a plain cake.

However, a piece of dry cake could always be helped down by a swig of Carrolade, a drink made by grating equal amounts of carrot and swede and pressing the juice. Even thinking of it frightens me. The wartime kitchen was no place for the faint-hearted.

And when all other things have been tried, how about using a carrot to engineer the downfall of the Führer? The plan, hatched by the OSS (later to become the CIA) was to bribe a member of staff to inject Hitler’s carrots with oestrogen. This, they thought, would make him grow man boobs and lose his moustache – forfeiting the respect of the German people, or, alternatively, become a gentler person, with less interest in war. There are various theories why it didn’t work, including a double-cross by one of the German agents. Or, like subsequent CIA plots to kill Castro or make his beard fall out, maybe it was just a really bad idea.

Nettles at War

8 Replies

This is lightly edited version of the article that first appeared on the website of the Peterborough Military History Group, hence the references to local places. That version can be found on the Research page of the Group website. And if you live in the area, new members are always welcome.

I imagine we are all familiar with the Stinging Nettle, or Urtica dioica as the botanists call it. They certainly form a significant part of my memories of childhood misadventures. The word Urtica is derived from a Latin word for sting, or burn, which is appropriate. They are a good source of food for caterpillars, make a nutritious soup, and have a number of uses in traditional medicine.

British Prisoners of War captured during the attacks of 21 March 1918 were held in poorly organised camps because the Germans were unprepared for the number of prisoners they took. Some of them, according to post-war newspaper reports, were reduced to eating nettles. Even British troops who weren’t prisoners were advised to add nettles to their stew to prevent scurvy.

The stings are easily deactivated by cooking or simply by cutting the nettle down. They inject the poison using a pressurised system, and if you cut them they wilt, lose pressure and stop stinging. You can eat the leaves raw without getting stung once this happens. I’m not recommending it, just telling you it can be done. In other words, if you try it and sting yourself –  tough!

Stinging Nettle

Romans used them for food and medicine, and there are references to legionaries in the German campaigns whipping themselves with nettles (known as urtication), which kept them awake on sentry duty, made them feel warmer and, possibly, reduced pain in sore joints. Native American traditional medicine also uses nettles in a similar way, with modern research seeming to support the idea that stings help with the pain of arthritis.

The stories that the Romans introduced nettles to this country are untrue, as we had nettles long before the Romans arrived. One source of knowledge about the early use of nettles is the Bronze Age site at Must Farm, near Peterborough. A half-eaten bowl of nettle soup was found, as were a number of textile samples showing that the inhabitants had used linen, nettle and tree bark fibres for various purposes a thousand years before the Romans arrived. Linen and nettles were used for producing cloth (the process of extracting the fibres is similar for the two types of plant) and the tree bark fibre was used for fishing nets. It seems surprising that cloth made from wild plants would still be needed when they could grow flax and produce fine linen, but despite our instinctive thoughts about rough nettle fabric, it actually makes a soft, high quality cloth.

Cotton started to appear in Europe in the 16th century but nettle cloth was commonly used in Scandinavia and Scotland, where it was known as “Scotch cloth” until the 19th century. It was mainly used for tablecloths and bedding.

The Central Powers imported a lot of fibre before the war – cotton from India and the USA, wool from Australia and Argentina. These markets were closed by the war (though the USA did continue to deal with the enemy for a considerable time, and complained about the restrictions the British put on trade).

The shortfall had to be made up from somewhere, and civilian clothing was made from a variety of substitute materials, including paper and reclaimed wool. This wasn’t sheets of paper, it was clothing woven by using specially produced thread from chemically treated wood pulp. In 1916 the German Government took over the clothing industry. The private sale of second-hand clothes was banned and they also regulated things like the length of dresses, and requisitioned many types of textile, including old blankets, and linen-backed maps. Reports indicate that scarecrows in Germany were stripped of their clothes to provide material for recycling, though this has a whiff of propaganda about it. After all, reports in 1914 indicated that Berliners had eaten the elephants from Berlin Zoo due to a lack of food. They hadn’t. They were in service as draught animals, which is a whole new article.

Nettle – courtesy of Wikipedia

However, uniforms did have a hard life and the high command recognised that it was false economy to produce poor quality kit, so these methods were mainly used for civilian clothes. The answer for the military, looking for high quality cloth, was nettles. They weren’t the first army to use nettle cloth, a century earlier Napoleon had also been blockaded, and had been forced to look for alternatives.

That was where “natural silk” came in. As the need for a cotton substitute became pressing, a researcher called Gottfried Richter, drew the attention of the authorities to the traditional uses of nettle fabric and large quantities of nettles that were readily available. The cloth produced from nettles is easily comparable to cotton, linen or even silk and has a number of advantages over wool or cotton, such as being hard wearing, resistant to shrinking and having natural anti-bacterial properties.

A report in the Evening Despatch (28 February 1916) reports that “Germany has access to large amounts of land in Belgium and Russian Poland where they will be able, in time, to grow flax and hemp. Jute stocks are nearly exhausted and there will be no more until after the war” (most of the world’s supply being grown in Bengal). The article also reports that “the Austrians have planted large amounts of nettles and “nesseltuch” (nettle cloth) is widely advertised in the newspapers”.

Just like the British, who sent people out to gather natural produce during both world wars, the Germans asked people to go out gathering nettles. They also cultivated nettles, and planted a large amount in the Danube valley. One article states that the German nettle harvesters were mainly school children and they harvested 10,000 tons of nettles to produce 1,500 tons of fibre. A shirt requires 45kg of nettles, and an area the size of 1½ football pitches can produce enough fibre for 100 shirts. The yield is a little over half the yield you would get from flax, but the cultivation, particularly as many of them grow wild, is a lot easier.

German Poster from WW1 – courtesy of Imperial war Museum

It wasn’t just clothing that used nettle fibre, it was also used to make cordage, nets, sandbags, sailcloth, straps, harnesses and backpacks. The nettles aren’t just a source of fibre, they are also a source of green and yellow dye.

By 1918 the Tewkesbury Register (07 December 1918) was able to report on “The Useful Nettle”, telling us that captured German uniforms were found to be made from nettles and listing other uses, including being a substitute, in early spring, for spinach, as the basis of a stout and serviceable paper and as a substitute for hemp in cloth and cordage.

In the Second World War. Germany was, again, resource poor and used nettles for textiles, even making parachutes from nettle cloth. Nettles were also one of the wild foods gathered by the German people, who along with most European nations, suffered from severe food shortages during the war.

They didn’t use as many nettles this time as they had plenty of rayon, a synthetic fibre produced from wood pulp treated with acid, which was easier to produce than nettle cloth. In pre-war uniforms the mix was 70% wool and 30% rayon with a linen lining. By the end of the war the linings were 100% rayon and the rayon/wool ratio (which by now used a lot of recycled wool) had shifted to just 30% being new wool.

The UK, on the other hand, despite being a major manufacturer of rayon (for parachutes in WW1, and for fabric and tyres in WW2). used nettles more than they had in the Great War. It was a simple equation – if you could produce something at home it saved space on a ship. We had to import the wood pulp used to make rayon so home grown nettles saved shipping space.

At Kew Gardens, plant scientists began to examine new uses for plants. One of the things they looked at was paper. Paper was always short during the war, as much of our pre-war wood pulp had come from Norway and the Army used a lot of paper. We could have brought it in from Canada, but that would have taken precious shipping space. In 1940, newspapers were restricted to 60% of their pre-war production and by 1945 they were down to 25%. Paper was salvaged and recycled, wrapping paper disappeared and burning it or throwing it away, was made illegal in 1942. Fortunately, nettle fibre was suitable for paper making, which helped alleviate the problem, and so , the paper drop tank was born, a construction of paper, glue and lacquer that held together just long enough to provide the fuel which allowed P51 Mustangs to escort bombers to Berlin.

They are a fine example of the balance that was needed in any scheme during the war. Paper was short, but metal was even more precious. By using paper drop tanks they saved metal, and also, when they jettisoned the empty tanks, they weren’t giving the Germans anything useful. Approximately 13,000 of these tanks were made, saving a lot of metal.

We also made fabric from nettles, and extracted fructose, a form of sugar from them. Chlorophyll had a number of medical uses, including being used on dressings. Nettles, along with alfalfa and spinach were one of the three best sources, and research at the time indicated that chlorophyll was effective in promoting the healing of burns and infected wounds (probably slightly better than penicillin), but when the two were used together the healing time shortened dramatically. It could also be used to produce a green dye, about 90 tons of nettles being used by the army in WW2 to dye camouflage nets.

Nettle Soup

School children became the preferred harvesters of nettles and the newspapers reflect this, though local references are sparse. The Northampton Mercury (22 August 1941), which refers to the WI at Geddington and their activities in collecting medicinal herbs, which they sent to wholesale druggists, and nettles. They were helped by local school children and teachers. Meanwhile, the WI at Earls Barton had a talk on Charles Dickens, and at Isham they were busy selling jam to raise £50 to buy a Bren gun.

At Donington, reported the Spalding Guardian (17 July 1942) Mrs Taylor (WI President) thanked all concerned in collecting 37ibs of nettles, including the scouts, who contributed 10 ibs of leaves already stripped from the stalks – a lot of leaves.

The Northampton Mercury and Herald (4 August 1944) tells people that efforts are to be concentrated on collecting rose hips as there is a need for vitamin C. Forty schools were acting as collecting depots (paying children 2d a pound). In 1943 Northamptonshire collected 14 tons of rose hips.

The first record we have of nettle fibre is finding used in Ancient Egypt in mummy bandages. It is still relevant today, as they use fewer resources and chemicals than cotton, and can be grown in Europe instead of being shipped in. Some exclusive fashion outlets use nettle fibre, but much of that is currently produced from Himalayan nettles, which isn’t sustainable. Currently, De Montfort University has a research team working on nettles so you never know, we could all be wearing nettles in the near future.

And just one extra point, to show how nettles are still used today – the dye made from the chlorophyll of nettles is now used to colour food, and has its own E Number – E140.

Nettle with Spider

Scarborough Attack – 1914

10 Replies

Scarborough Castle, Yorkshire (with “Dramatic” filter in use.

This is an expanded version of the article that appeared on the Facebook page of the Numismatic Society of Nottinghamshire. I thought it would be quick and easy as away of adding a post without much work, as Julia has me down for various household jobs today. It took longer than I thought. Easy things are seldom as simple as they sound.

Wednesday 16 December 1914. 8 am. Three German warships appear out of the mist and open fire, sending 500 shells into the undefended town of Scarborough. Seventeen people are killed and eighty suffer serious injuries, two of them dying in the next few days. 

The ships then sail off to attack Whitby, killing 3 people and damaging many houses. Three shells hit the abbey, including a direct hit on the West Front. The damage they inflicted on Scarborough Castle and Whitby Abbey can still be seen today. The West Front at Whitby was rebuilt in the 1920s, using pre-war photographs and pictures as a guide. The remains of the barrack block at Scarborough were demolished and removed.

Whitby Abbey

Meanwhile, another group of battleships bombard Hartlepool, which, with three guns in coastal batteries, is better able to fight back. According to research done in 1965, 122 civilians were killed and 443 wounded. Five soldiers and two sailors were also killed and 14 military personnel wounded. German casualties, inflicted by the Hartlepool guns, were 8 killed and 12 wounded.

Private Theophilus Jones of the Durham Light Infantry, killed at Hartlepool, becomes the first British soldier to be killed in Britain for 200 years.

Medallion commemorating the dastardly attack on Scarborough, 1914

In military terms little was accomplished. The Germans had multiple aims – to ambush and sink defending Royal Navy ships, to depress civilian morale, to tie up British troops to defend the coast, and to inflict losses on munitions production. They seem to have failed in every one. Equally, the Royal Navy failed to engage the retreating German ships in decisive action and were unable to demonstrate their control of the North Sea to either the Germans or the British public. Politically, “Remember Scarborough!” became a powerful recruiting slogan, and American attitudes began to harden against Germany.

Government propagandists chose to concentrate on Scarborough as it was the best known of the three towns, being a popular holiday resort, and had no defences or military production facilities. It did have radio stations working with the Royal Navy, but that was ignored at the time.

Scarborough would be attacked again, though there is no medallion for the second attack. On September 4 1917, a U-Boat surfaced and engaged anchored trawlers in South Bay. They were being employed by the Royal Navy as minesweepers and, being armed, were able to defend themselves. Shots were exchanged – one British sailor was killed and stray German shells killed two civilians on shore. After four years of war, showing how the nation had become accustomed to death, the reporting showed no more outrage at this news than it did to the rest of the local news.

The reverse of the medallion.

North Bay, Scarborough. Looking North.

 

Almost Done!

9 Replies

 

 

 

 

These two pictures are the miniature medals of Major J L Partington MBE, MC and his Brazilian ID card from a trip he made in 1952. Miniature medals are worn for events like formal dinners I will do a longer write up on them in a later post.

Major Partington was an engineer by profession and went to work in Argentina before the Great War. He returned to fight, joined the Royal Engineers and was decorated for spending all day under shell fire rescuing trains and equipment. He then went back to Argentina, married and had two sons, who were both killed in the RAF, one one in 1941 and one in 1942. I often think, when people are talking about how hard life is, we don’t really have a clue these days compared to the generations that lived through the wars.

Today was the day I hit Peak Panic with the presentation. I only have until Monday, and as I’m working tomorrow, I’m short of time. I’m also short on research and have no chance of preparing all the materials I was going to put together.

On the other hand, I have now learned most of what I need to know about putting a presentation together (I forget how to make a slide show after each time I do one) and by late afternoon I had the majority of it in place, It’s nothing like as good as I wanted. On the other hand (leaving false modesty apart) it’s far from the worst one we’re going to have this winter.

I have plenty of slides, plenty of stories, know my material and have a relaxed manner of delivery. I’ve enjoyed doing it and I’m going to enjoy it. I’ve also bought some great display stands off the internet and the collection is going to look good.

I also bought some bookstands. One of the medal recipients wrote a book about his wartime experiences and another features in a chapter of  book by someone else, so I will have two books on display – I always find myself being impressed by that sort of thing,and hope other people are too.

The header picture is the book by the medal recipient – Night Fighter by Lewis Brandon. I first read it when i was about twelve and it made a big impression on me. It was fifty years later that I was able to buy the miniatures, and it’s very unusual to be able to put this much detail with a group of medals.

He was an actor before the war, a pioneering radar operator during the war and a publican and hotelier after the war (amongst other things) and the book, which only covers his life until 1945) makes a good read.

Anyway, whatever happens, I won’t be telling people that it’s fallen short of my intentions, so they need never know. That’s something I was taught in sales – the customer doesn’t actually know how badly prepared or nervous you are, so hide it and get on with the job in hand.

Miniature Medals of Lt Col Wall

Lt Colonel Wall was decorated by the British and Dutch Governments. He was a pre-war railway manager and used his expertise by supplying troops with food and equipment in three campaigns.

In the winter of 1944-45 the Germans cut off supplies of food and fuel to a substantial portion of the Netherlands as a reprisal for actions of the Dutch Resistance. It was a bad winter and at least 30,000 people died of cold and hunger. Many of the survivors, including a child called Edda van Heemstra, had to eat tulip bulbs to survive and suffered from bad health all their lives.

She became a UN ambassador and worked to relieve famine out of gratitude for the international given to her country at the end of the war. Wall’s part in the relief effort was recognised by the award of the Order of Orange-Nassau (the impressive medal on the end of the group).

By the time van Heemstra worked for the UN, she had resumed the use of her English name,  which had been a problem during the occupation. That is why she is better known as Audrey Hepburn.

Chilwell – a Nottingham Story

11 Replies

My apologies. I started yesterday morning with the intention of stitching together two short articles on Chilwell and adding a few more notes to remove some of the numismatic bias. It isn’t quite as seamless as I had intended, and as an added bonus, I seem to have introduced quite a few variations into the text with unexpected changes of font, colour and boldness. I’m not sure how I have managed to do this, but I think it is now, mostly, corrected.

Further apologies if you have come from my first post of the day, as you will already know all the information contained in that first paragraph. As we get older we ramble and repeat ourselves. Well, I do.

The word Chilwell probably doesn’t mean much to people outside Nottingham. Today, what remains is known as Chetwynd Barracks, but it has been there since 1915 with a variety of identities.

The outbreak of the Great War in 1914 changed British life forever, including numismatics. Wars need three things – men, money and munitions. During the first weekend of the war men queued to join the services, oblivious to the reality of the coming war, and over a million joined up by the end of the year. Then the money changed. The August Bank Holiday was extended to stop people withdrawing gold from the banks, as it was needed by the Government to finance the war. It took just six days to pass the Currency and Bank Notes Act, 1914 and design and print new notes. When the banks reopened on Friday 7th August, stocks of £1 notes were available to replace sovereigns. Ten Shilling notes became available the following week.

At the end of the war, there was a better known consequence, as the purity of the silver coinage dropped from .925 (Sterling Silver) to .500 in 1920. 

Finally – munitions. The armies on the Western Front fired approximately 1.5 billion shells. The British share of this required them to build 170 National Factories, including 27 which specialised in filling shells with explosives. This was very different to the single shell-filling factory we had in 1914 (Woolwich Arsenal). This expansion included Shell Filling Factory Number Six at Chilwell. During the war, the factory produced over 19 million shells, using over 120,000 tons of high explosive.

It was built without much central control. Lord Chetwynd, on the instructions of Lloyd George (who was then Chancellor of the Exchequer and head of the munitions committee), used his industrial know-how to build a factory. He told the government that he would not accept any interference and went about building a factory and developing a shell-filling system. Chetwynd was an interesting character who spent his youth touring the USA, working as a deputy sheriff in Texas, a bronco buster and a cornet player, before coming back to the UK where he became a director of Vickers Armstrong and the Wolseley Motor Car Company. He was one of a number of aggressive businessmen brought into munitions production by Lloyd George and it seemed to work well as a system.

The plan of the factory was drawn up on 7 September 1915, ground was broken on 13 September. By 8 January 1916 the first shells had been filled and by 22 January a batch had been transported to Shoeburyness for test firing. They performed well and by March the factory began in full scale production. By April they were producing 7,000 shells a week. This was done using a large number of women workers. Women had been working in factories and mills for years so I’m always surprised to see it written about as if it were a new idea, but I suppose it was the idea of using large numbers of women and trusting them to do skilled jobs that was the novelty. Over 800,000 women were eventually employed making munitions.

During the war 30-40,000 restrictive Trade Union practices were suspended, about 75% of them being practices which had restricted the use of women to do certain jobs, particularly complex jobs like working machines, which were clearly beyond the comprehension of women. Strangely, a hundred years later, this still seems to be the view of many car mechanics. These restrictions were reinstated in 1919. Although women could now vote (as long as they were 30) they were no longer allowed to do complex things like work machinery. Unless that machinery was a loom or a sewing machine, which has always struck me as being quite complex.

Factory check

The 38mm brass check illustrated was used as an ID disc for factory staff. The disc bears the crowned double C device on one side and a number on the other. The device was taken from the Chetwynd family coat of arms. The reverse has the wording THE PROPERTY OF THE NATIONAL SHELL FILLING FACTORY No 6 around the edges and CHILWELL in the centre with a stamped number.

The additional stamping – THE VC FACTORY 1915 1918 – is a reference to events on the night of 1 July 1918 when eight tons of TNT exploded. There was some fear of sabotage at the time, and also a feeling that the hot weather might have contributed to the instability of the mixture. However, the official enquiry decided that the most likely cause was a relaxation of safety standards to enable higher production rates.

The explosion was heard 30 miles away, and could have been a lot worse – the works manager, Arthur Bristowe, took burning TNT from the line and prevented a further 15 tons exploding. He was awarded the Edward Medal for his actions, one of the highest civilian gallantry awards available at the time. However, 132 people were killed in the blast and around 250 more were injured. Despite this, the day shift turned up for work as usual next morning and production restarted. Within a month the factory was reported to have set a new production record. In Parliament, Frederick Kellaway MP suggested that it might be appropriate to follow foreign practice and award a decoration to the factory. This was not followed up officially, but the factory workers took matters into their own hands and many surviving discs are stamped with the VC inscription.

Factory check – this one with the VC Factory overstamp. At the end of the war Lord Chetwynd allowed the staff to keep them as a memento. 

This was one of several explosions that took place at the factory, though the previous ones had killed only three people in total. It was also only one of several notable explosions in shell factories during the war – the other main ones being at Faversham (105 fatalities in 1916) and Silvertown (73 fatalities in 1917).

In all, around 600 people were killed in munitions explosions though many others died. A report from the munitions factory at Gretna indicates that 145 people died during the war, 115 men and 30 women, many being from industrial accidents rather than explosions. Many more died after the war from long term health conditions associated with the use of dangerous chemicals. There seems to be no figure for that, but I have seen a figure of 400 people dying as a result of exposure to TNT. This used to turn the skin yellow, which is why munitions workers were often known as “Canary Girls”.

All things eventually come to an end, and as the Great War drew to a close the need for shells decreased. The National Shell Filling Factory at Chilwell closed, and the story of “The VC Factory” passed into history.

However, the army retained the site, and built a depot for the Royal Army Ordnance Corps (RAOC) on the site, responsible for supplies of weapons, armoured vehicles, ammunition, clothing, laundry, mobile baths and photography, amongst other things. Chilwell dealt with general and surplus stores, and, with the re-armament that preceded the Second World War, was redeveloped in 1937, when it became one of five Central Ordnance Depots (COD) and specialised in building armoured vehicles.

The blue enamel tank badge with the “V for Victory” motif dates from WW2.

Chilwell Tank Fund Badge. Not exactly sure what it was for but the Victory V marks it down as WW2 in date. (Just researching it now – seems it was from a fund raising effort in 1941).

At its wartime peak in WW2 Chilwell COD employed 5,000 military and 7,500 civilian personnel. Eventually, after numerous reorganisations to mirror Britain’s decreasing army, the RAOC left Chilwell in 1982, and the depot closed on 31 March 1982. This is commemorated by the final medal, which has the badge of the RAOC on one side and a “VC Factory” design on the other.

The RAOC eventually disappeared completely when it was absorbed into the newly formed Royal Logistic Corps in 1993. Chilwell became Chetwynd Barracks in 1995, named after Viscount Chetwynd, and if everything goes to plan the barracks will be sold in 2026 for redevelopment as housing.

The final medallion.

A Day with Few Results

11 Replies

After a day which produced very little in the way of results, I prepared the soup pan, set it going and sat down to read blogs before writing. I had just come to the end of the reading when the alarm went off. Time to do combat now – just me, a pan of mushrooms and a hand blender. I will be back later to write the rest of the post.

Back now. The soup was more watery than usual, which was actually good, as it is usually too thick. I added a sprinkle of dried Italian herbs tonight, which added to the flavour, and all was good. We then finished off the mixed fruit crumble Julia had made at the weekend with the last of the cream (it had lasted for three meals, which is quite good).

Northamptonshire Red Cross fundraising flag. Quite dull, as it has the same thing on both sides.

During the day I gave Julia a lift to the dentist, went to visit a couple of friends in their shop and, I confess, did very little until it was time to make soup. Julia is much the same. We are blaming it on our slow recovery from Covid. Next week we are hoping to be more active. But next Wednesday I have a blood test, a Shingles vaccination and a day at work. It is going to be more active whether I like it or not.

I’m already starting to think about my display for the Numismatic Society next month. The photos are some that I have taken to illustrate the display.

The one below is a better example – no rust on the pin, for one thing, plus it has a date and a location on it. In a collecting area which is bereft of reference material, this is important stuff.

Reverse

Obverse

Newark Siege Shilling 1645

9 Replies

 

Not sure what happened to the original post, but Julia sent me a copy of the post from her notification.

During the Civil War (1642-51) Newark was besieged three times. It was an important transport hub where two roads (The Great North Road and the Fosse Way), and the River Trent met. Whoever controlled Newark had a great deal of influence in the conduct of the war.

Though the road system has changed a bit over the years, the Great North Road still appears under that name on my satnav, though it is variously known as the A1 or A1(M) these days. It was Ermine Street in the days of the Romans, and the the Fosse Way retains its Roman name to this day, as it makes its way between Exeter and Lincoln. It’s also known as the A46 when it passes Newark. The Trent is still in use as a working waterway with barges conveying sand, gravel and oil. It’s interesting to note that our transport system hasn’t changed that much in 2,000 years.

Anyway, back to the sieges. The siege of 1643 was insignificant, and lasted from 27th to 28th February. It was, to be honest, little more than a visit and the Parliamentarian forces were completely outclassed in terms of leadership and fighting spirit.

The second was February 29th to March 21st 1644 and ended when Prince Rupert’s  relief force mounted a surprise attack and trapped the army of Sir John Meldrum. They were eventually allowed to march away, leaving their equipment behind – 3,000 muskets, 11 cannon and 2 mortars.

altNewark Siege Coin 1645

The final siege lasted from 26th November 1645 – 8th May 1646. THe Royalists were on the ropes by this time but they had spent the years building defences and Newark was one of the few places still capable of resisting. One of the Star Forts is still there – the Queen’s Sconce. In the old days, before we started being more careful of our heritage I marched up and down it re-enacting the siege. It was hard work, even without people actually trying to kill me.  The third siege featured 17,000 Parliamentarian troops, including Scots, against the town. The people, of Newark suffered cold, hunger and disease (around 1,000 dying of typhus and plague). Eventually the King surrendered to the Scots commanders at The Saracen’s Head in Southwell and the town surrendered two days later. It is still a pub, and still named The Saracen;s Head if you fancy a drink in a place with history.

The coin in the header picture is a Newark Siege Shilling. Siege coins were made for use in besieged towns so that normal life could carry on. They were made from silver, such as plates and spoons, and cut to weight to equal the weight of silver in coin of the realm (which were made of sterling silver in those days). Newark coins are dated 1645 or 1646 and are available as halfcrowns (XXX), shillings (XII), ninepences (IX) and sixpences (VI). They are almost always slightly untidy in the striking – hardly surprising when you consider they were made from flattening household silver and then cutting it into lozenges before hammering between home-made dies. Sometimes they even have remnants of decoration on them from the original donor item. They are often found pierced as loyal Royalists used to wear them as pendants in remembrance of the King.

Newark Siege Shilling 1645

Newark Siege Shilling 1645

There are other siege coins (also known as obsidional coins) from towns in the UK, though many of them have been challenged as “fantasy pieces”. Pontefract, Scarborough, Carlisle and Cork all seem to have struck coins, some of which were of far worse quality than the Newark coins.

Obsidional comes from the Latin obsidionalis, meaning “of a siege”, hence the “OBS” stamped on the Newark coin.

Britannia – a woman with a past

15 Replies

I nearly forgot I had to post. It seems harder to remember now that I have stopped numbering the posts.

I really don’t like the days after Bank Holidays. It’s nice having Monday off, but as I always have Wednesdays  off I have to go into work for just one day. It feels like I’m just getting going when I have to stop again.

Today we did parcels until lunch, having had several orders over the weekend. Then I did halfpennies. I’m preparing a listing for halfpennies from Charles II to George III. The earliest is 1673 and the latest just reaches the early 1800s.

In those days they used Latin names for Kings – Carolus is Charles. It’s clearly been in circulation for some time. Judging by the Victorian coins we had in our pockets when we went decimal it was probably in use for a hundred years. Britannia came into existence with the Romans and first appeared on the coins of Hadrian before many centuries of obscurity. She reappeared on the coins of Charles II in 1672, modelled (according to Samuel Pepys) on  Frances Stewart, later the Duchess of Richmond and Lennox. There are various accounts, some stating that she resisted the advances of Charles II, others that she didn’t.

Over the years she gained a Union Flag on the shield, a trident (in place of the spear) and a helmet. In 1673, when this coin was new, we were at war with the Dutch, Sir Christopher Wren was knighted and the Chelsea Physic Garden was opened. When it was a year old we took back the Dutch colony of New Amsterdam and changed the name of the city of New Orange back to New York.

Over the next few years, whilst this coin was still shiny, the rebuilding of St Paul’s Cathedral started and Titus Oates began the Popish Plot.

Interesting times . . .

Newark Siege Coin 1645

Leave a Reply

During the Civil War (1642-51) Newark was besieged three times. It was an important transport hub where two roads (The Great North Road and the Fosse Way), and the River Trent met. Whoever controlled Newark had a great deal of influence in the conduct of the war.

Though the road system has changed a bit over the years, the Great North Road still appears under that name on my satnav, though it is variously known as the A1 or A1(M) these days. It was Ermine Street in the days of the Romans, and the the Fosse Way retains its Roman name to this day, as it makes its way between Exeter and Lincoln. It’s also known as the A46 when it passes Newark. The Trent is still in use as a working waterway with barges conveying sand, gravel and oil. It’s interesting to note that our transport system hasn’t changed that much in 2,000 years.

Anyway, back to the sieges. The siege of 1643 was insignificant, and lasted from 27th to 28th February. It was, to be honest, little more than a visit and the Parliamentarian forces were completely outclassed in terms of leadership and fighting spirit.

The second was February 29th to March 21st 1644 and ended when Prince Rupert’s  relief force mounted a surprise attack and trapped the army of Sir John Meldrum. They were eventually allowed to march away, leaving their equipment behind – 3,000 muskets, 11 cannon and 2 mortars.

Newark Siege Coin 1645

The final siege lasted from 26th November 1645 – 8th May 1646. THe Royalists were on the ropes by this time but they had spent the years building defences and Newark was one of the few places still capable of resisting. One of the Star Forts is still there – the Queen’s Sconce. In the old days, before we started being more careful of our heritage I marched up and down it re-enacting the siege. It was hard work, even without people actually trying to kill me.  The third siege featured17,000 Parliamentarian troops, including Scots, against the town. The people, of Newark suffered cold, hunger and disease (around 1,000 dying of typhus and plague). Eventually the King surrendered to the Scots commanders at The Saracen’s Head in Southwell and the town surrendered two days later. It is still a pub, and still named The Saracen;s Head if you fancy a drink in a place with history.

The coin in the header picture is a Newark Siege Shilling. Siege coins were made for use in besieged towns so that normal life could carry on. They were made from silver, such as plates and spoons, and cut to weight to equal the weight of silver in coin of the realm (which were made of sterling silver in those days). Newark coins are dated 1645 or 1646 and are available as halfcrowns (XXX), shillings (XII), ninepences (IX) and sixpences (VI). They are almost always slightly untidy in the striking – hardly surprising when you consider they were made from flattening household silver and then cutting it into lozenges before hammering between home-made dies. Sometimes they even have remnants of decoration on them from the original donor item. They are often found pierced as loyal Royalists used to wear them as pendants in remembrance of the King.

There are other siege coins (also known as obsidional coins) from towns in the UK, though many of them have been challenged as “fantasy pieces”. Pontefract, Scarborough, Carlisle and Cork all seem to have struck coins, some of which were of far worse quality than the Newark coins.

Obsidional comes from the Latin obsidionalis, meaning “of a siege”, hence the “OBS” stamped on the Newark coin.

Newark Siege Shilling 1645

Newark Siege Shilling 1645

 

Two New Sweetheart Brooches

14 Replies

US Navy Sweetheart Brooches – the penny is 20.3 mm in diameter. An American cent has a diameter of  19.05 mm for those of you who like to know these things.

Despite the need to spend money on the house, and to declutter, I am still browsing eBay, and still adding a few items to my collection. If you want to see other examples , I have written about  Sweetheart Brooches in a previous post,

My collecting started over 50 years ago.  I was about five or six when I started collecting badges. A few years later my Dad gave me his stamp collection (which had been untouched since he had left the Navy). I added a few to it, then went into coins, bird’s eggs (yes, I know this was bad) and military medals. I’ve carried on sporadically ever since. At times I’ve been busy or broke, so there have been long gaps between purchases. However, with eBay , a regular income and the time that comes from having no kids around the place, I have been slowly adding to the collection again.

The latest two are both American and Naval. I don’t collect Navy brooches to the same extent as I collect the army ones but I always like to add a different type when  I find one. American brooches are often sentimental/patriotic rather than military in style, though there are some more military ones. They also tend to have more bracelets than we do. Generally I don’t collect brooches from beyond the Commonwealth forces, but if I see an unusual type I can be tempted.

US Navy Sweetheart Brooch – with PO Class II badge

A couple of months ago I was tempted by the brooch with the Eagle and Chevrons. I think it is the badge of a Petty Officer Class II but I’m relying on the internet for this, as I’m not sound on US Navy badges. I have a couple of other brooches with this sort of chain set-up but this is better quality, and it’s always nice to upgrade. Collecting sweethearts, you will never get every possible type, so there’s no point trying. Compared to the tyranny of trying to collect one of every known date of a coin, this is a very relaxed way of collecting. These days I just collect things that catch my eye, and where the price is right.

A couple of weeks ago, another one caught my eye. It’s exactly the same sailor and the same set-up but the device on the chain is the medal ribbon of the American WW2 campaign medal for Europe, Africa and the Middle East. It was sold by the same dealer and is out of the same collection.

US Navy Sweetheart – Europe, Africa and the Middle East campaign ribbon

I’m now checking them regularly to see if they have any other varieties. With coins and medals all the varieties are known and catalogued (with the odd rare exception) but with sweetheart brooches you can’t know everything. There might be sailors with different devices attached, or there may be marines, soldiers or airmen. You never know…

 

US Navy Sweetheart – fine work