NEWSLETTER 12th October 2018
Forthcoming K&DLHG event 19st October, 7.30 Village Hall. John Berkeley will give a talk entitled the Czechs in Warwickshire in World War II. Leamington, Moreton Paddox 
and Kineton were all used by to house Czech refugees and soldiers. In 1940 exiled soldiers of the Free Czechoslovak Army were secretly trained in Warwickshire for a mission to assassinate the SS Deputy Chief. 
John’s talk reveals the link between Warwickshire and what Neville Chamberlain called “a faraway country [and] people of whom we know nothing” . John will give us all the details …… The Czech War Memorial in Leamington Spa
Report on the 21st September talk by Andrew Baxter celebrating the Edgehill Tea Gardens.
First, our thanks to the lady who nobly went home to get batteries for the microphone, thus enabling the talk to be heard properly by the whole audience. Andrew then took us through the history of Edgehill – or Ratley Grange as it was called – as a resort, 
from Sanderson Miller’s 18th-century picturesque tower and ruins, through the vandalism of the last century, to explain what remains today. Apart from the tower, all that survives of what first attracted visitors to the spot are three stones on the corner of a drive and the very tidied-up and extended Egge Cottage. Andrew surprised us by listing and mapping a total of seven tea gardens in the village itself and two more, one on the Knoll and another at Sunrising House. In the late 19th until the mid- 20th century these thriving businesses catered for hundreds of sightseers arriving by coaches charabancs, carriages, bicycles and car. We saw an ad. for cheap train excursions from London to Edgehill in 1902. The biggest establishment, run by Mr Griffin, was simply known as “The Edgehill Tea Garden”. It hosted events such as the dance in 1904 attended by more than 60 people, including the enthusiastic vicar, with dancing from 8.00pm to 1.00am. Larger still, and certainly more radical, was the 1890 meeting of several hundred liberal supporters – “separatists” in the press reports – harangued by an MP and our own Bolton King. Ratley Grange had a post-office, a butchers, a grocers, a baker, the inn and the quarry. As Andrew pointed out we owe much of our knowledge of Edgehill’s past and its flourishing tourist trade to photographers making commercial postcards but unwittingly recording its now lost glories. The current incarnation of the Castle Inn is the successor of the vibrant activities now represented by faded paint on a gate pillar, an urn in a private garden, a carved fleur de lis mounted upside down as an angel and a length of dropped kerb. Andrew was congratulated by Rachel Mander on his research, and his informal, lively presentation of part of the relatively recent past that has all but disappeared.
Other Societies’ events
Tuesday Oct 16th Warwickshire Local History Society, Dr John Connolly 1794-1866 in Warwickshire: physician, reformer, enigma by Dr John Wilmott. Quaker Meeting House, Warwick, coffee 7.30pm, talk commences 8.00pm.
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KDLHG Committee Matters.
The committee met on 10th September. The main business was to confirm the speakers and outings for 2019-20. The members of the committee undertook to ensure that we have the best speakers for the next season, and the programme will be circulated at the January 2019 meeting. There was discussion at the recent Village Hall Association committee meeting towards making space in the Village Hall for an archive, and a costed proposal is being prepared. Our treasurer Richard Hurley is leaving the committee at the next AGM so we have an urgent requirement to find a new treasurer. Please seriously consider this if you or someone you know would be able to take this on.
The next KDLHG Committee Meeting is on Monday the 12th November 2018. As the library is being used as a Green Room by KADS that evening Catherine Petrie has kindly agreed to host the meeting at her home.
DF 12.10. 2018