NEWSLETTER 6th MARCH 2019
Our AGM and talk on 15th March starts at the normal meeting time of 7.30pm.
This AGM meeting will be a departure from the format of previous years. As numbers coming for the combined AGM + Supper have steadily declined and the provision of the paid supper has become unviable, your committee has arranged something different for 2019. The business part of the meeting will be short, starting at our usual time for talks. It will be followed by a sociable session, when you will be invited to taste food prepared from historic recipes by members of the committee. This is FREE! Soft drinks will be provided but bring your own alcoholic beverages, they may even be historic! There will be short descriptions of the various morsels and their sources, and a fiendish quiz. Come prepared to be surprised, disgusted and entertained by some of what our forebears put in their mouths (Farts of Portingale anybody?)
The business part of this meeting is the chance for you to raise issues and ask questions of the committee. It is also when we elect the 2019-20 committee, and we are keen to recruit new committee members to introduce fresh ideas and energy. The last few years have seen several long-serving members leave the committee and we need to boost our numbers again. If you would like to contribute to how your Group is run, please consider election. Nominations from the floor will be accepted at the AGM.
Report on 15th February Our member Ilona Sekacz gave us The Pit and the Metronome: writing music for Shakespeare, drawing on over 35 years of experience writing award winning music for the theatre, TV, public events and films. After a dramatic introduction enacting an RSC technical rehearsal (during which our microphone had to be abandoned) Ilona described the time-line of writing music for the theatre and for Shakespeare in particular. We learned that Shakespeare often used music to 
emphasise or comment on the action, like the diminishing status of the fanfares and flourishes introducing King Lear’s entrances as his own standing declined. And in the same play the healing property ascribed to string music is used to treat Lear after the battle scene. We still use the phrase “If music be the food of love…” The music and sound in a dramatic production must contribute to the director’s vision, although Ilona acknowledged that actually when writing she believes that the music is, obviously, the most important element of the production! Considerable ingenuity might be required, for instance to accommodate non-singing actors who have songs in their roles, or alternatively, to write new material for accomplished singers, while enhancing the purpose of the production. Ilona illustrated some of the innovative ways she has made sounds, particularly the “prepared piano” when objects are laid on the strings or the strings are abused in various ways to produce new sounds (a Wigmore Hall piano may still contain a steel ball-bearing lost in one such session!). Her own experience as a violinist sometimes influenced her solutions: using an unplugged electric violin to give a thin and tremulous tone in the film Solomon and Gaynor, or a re-tuned three-quarter violin, used by Tony Sher like a ukele as the fool in King Lear. Ilona left us wanting to know more as she tantalisingly skipped through a dozen or so fascinating-looking slides without comment, except that she was running out of time, perhaps appropriately for a talk with metronome in the title. Gill Ashley-Smith led the vote of thanks for Ilona’s insights into a successful professional career, pointing out how little, sometimes, one knows about familiar people in our own community.
Correction: , Tim Newcombe’s talk on the Mills Family of Pillerton Priors is on the 26th April the 4th Friday of the month, not the 12th as in the Programme Card
19 March. Warwickshire Local History: AGM followed by “George Eliot and Warwickshire” by David Paterson. Quaker Meeting House. 7.30 coffee, 8.00pm talk
21 March. Warmington Heritage Group: Tooley’s Boatyard and the Oxford Canal by Matt Armitage, 7.30 Warmington Village Hall.
22 March. Lighthorne History Society: Pittern Villa farm and the Compton Verney Estate Sales by Brian Lewis. 7.30 Lighthorne Village Hall
22 March. Portcullis History Bede and his World, 10.00am – 4.00pm with Dr John Hunt, Hatton Village Hall £40.00
25 March. Marton Local History Group: Leamington Hastings Church Restoration by Brian Cooke, 7.30 Marton Village Hall
18 April. Warmington Heritage Group: Using Old Maps, LIDAR and Metal Detecting to Investigate Ancient Tracks and Byways by Colin Clay and Phillip Taylor. 7.30 Warmington Village Hall
Local History Book
Kineton resident Arno Christiansen has just produced the book of his memoirs based on his experiences in WWII and afterwards. The book is The Barbed Wire Fence and can be ordered from Amazon. The Group heard from Arno in 2007, when he showed his drawings of his life as a PoW and later in the 1940s, including sketches of Ettington Camp. Members will recollect George Lokuciejewski’s descriptions of the same camp when it was the Ettington Polish Resettlement Camp 31, which we heard at our Christmas Treats meeting last year. Arno married a local girl and settled in the village after the war.
KDLHG Committee Matters. At the committee meeting at the Village Hall on 11th February the nomination at the AGM of Ted Crofts as our new Treasurer to was unanimously agreed, with some relief. Peter Waters’ efforts in the interregnum period was recognised and much appreciated. There was discussion about the need to up-date the signatories for bank transactions, and at the same time bring the title the bank uses for the group into line with our actual name.
Bob Bearman reported that, with Gill, he had completed the editing of Peter Ashley-Smith’s articles and David Beaumont had provided the photographs. It was agreed to go ahead with printing 400 copies of the book, initially as a print-only version, with an on-line version, at a reduced price, in the future.
David Freke reported on the progress of proposals for providing space for the group’s archive in the Village Hall. Plans have been prepared for approval of the Village Hall Association Users Committee and estimates for the proposed work are being obtained.
Arrangements for the AGM were discussed and a small working party formed to undertake the necessary actions, (Isobel Gill, Catherine Petrie, Claire Roberts, Ilona Sekacz).
Steve Gill announced his decision to stand down from the committee at the 2019 AGM.
The new committee will meet at 7.30pm on April 29th 2019, at 5 Church Houses, Manor Lane, by kind invitation of Catherine Petrie
DF 06.03. 2019
The forthcoming K&DLHG meeting is on 15th February when our member Ilona Sekacz will give us a talk entitled The Pit and the Metronome: writing music for Shakespeare. Ilona will draw on over 35 years of experience writing music for the theatre, TV, public events and films, concentrating on her long association with the RSC and the changes she has seen (and heard), caused in part by technological advances. She will describe her experience of working with innovative directors and actors, and the role of music and sound in shaping their visions of Shakespeare’s dramas. Ilona has seen many changes, from composing with pencil on manuscript paper and cutting and splicing magnetic tape, to computers which access virtually endless resources and manipulations. We look forward to hearing, literally, how our local national theatre company has approached the use of music in Shakespeare productions.
Arc
remembered in Kineton not only through his last residence “Admiral’s House” in Bridge Street, but also his solemn funeral through Kineton in 1956. He saw action in the Royal Navy fairly continuously from the late 1880s, including in the Boer War, WWI, and in interwar duties around the Baltic, and then in WWII, in his 70s, with the commandos. We look forward to hearing from David more about our most illustrious military hero, whose banner still hangs in St Peter’s Church.
Camp. This had been a PoW camp during the war (Camp 31) and a stone has been found inscribed “2 PoW Camp 31 1943 Andernach” built into a local farmyard. George put the experience of some of the Polish fighters and their families in the aftermath of WWII into context. The pictures of the camp and the interiors of the nissen huts and temporary buildings vividly showed the way families made the most of the conditions. In the camps Polish national dress and language were fostered, and George demonstrated that he still spoke Polish. It was a surprise to hear that there is still a resettlement camp with inhabitants who have not intergrated into the British community. Peter Waters followed, with reminiscences of his family’s Chislehurst bookselling business dating back to the mid 19th century. After a brief genealogical survey Peter donned a variety of hats to enact a series of apparently real dialogues between customers and 
booksellers. These ranged from being asked to act as a creche, to being berated for not selling things other than books. I enjoyed the idea that signed copies of Shakespeare or even the Bible might be available. If only! Peter’s fine performance caught the absurdity of some bookshop conversations.
execute himself before he can execute anybody else. Bob gave us a moving rendition of “Tit willow, tit willow, tit willow”. Having reduced us to tears, he stiffened our sinews with The Yeoman of the Guard. Gilbert’s lyrics satirising the politics and mores of the late 19th century seemed strangely relevant to our contemporary situation, with many a sage head nodding as parliament, and peers of the realm, got the Gilbert treatment in Bob’s fine and individual account of the songs.
Moreton Morrell. The Hall has already featured in a number of our evenings, most recently in John Berkeley’s description of its requisition by a unit of the Czechoslovak Field Artillery in WWII. Brian’s position as a long serving member of staff at the Agricultural College, which now occupies the Hall and its estate, has given him an insider’s view of its development, and he has been writing the official history. The Hall was built by an American businessman, Charles Tuller Garland in 1906, one of several American owned houses in the area – namely Ashorne House and the short lived Moreton Paddox. Moreton Hall was luxurious, with silver door-furniture, marble bathrooms, and large oak panelled rooms. The female servants lived in the attics, the male servants in the basement. The gardens around the house included a rose garden, a cascade and pond, a tea house, a sunken garden and extensive walks. A polo ground occupied part of the estate and international polo stars played there. The estate supported a working farm, and after being sold in 1939 and then requisitioned by the military in WWII, it became an agricultural college. In the audience were past and present members of staff, as well as ex-students, and they contributed anecdotes and reminiscences during the questions session. Brian Lewis remembered the marble bathroom; and the billiard room’s later function as the student bar seemed to hold fond memories too. The recent diversification as a conference and wedding venue may have saved some of the college assets from the 
disastrous 2008 fire, which gutted most of the Hall. Many college functions, including the library, had by then been dispersed to other estate buildings. The exterior has been restored and plans are afoot to reconstruct the interior over the next few years. Brian Lewis gave Brian (Morgan) our thanks for illuminating the history of a building and institution on our doorstep, and which has influenced so many of our members’ subsequent careers.
of individuals from their villages in eastern Czechoslovakia, John recounted their tortuous routes to England to escape the Nazi persecution about to overtake their homeland. The British military facilitated the evacuation of 4,000 Czechoslovak army volunteers from the south of France via Gibraltar. Once here, as the Czechoslovak Free Army, they moved around the country, training in Scotland, at Cholmondeley in Cheshire, and sent to duties in Seaton in Devon, Leigh on Sea, Lowestoft and Harwich. Their quarters around south Warwickshire included Leamington, Moreton Paddox, Moreton Morrell, Butlers Marston, Walton Hall, and Kineton.
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. 
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.
This was a clever illusion, and we were able to walk down under the shimmering surface to admire her splendid bottom. The guides had given us a brief history, explaining that the interior was reconstructed to reflect two of the main episodes of her chequered career, the stern half reproducing the brief luxury of its intended purpose as an ocean liner on the transatlantic route, and the forward 
areas giving an insight into its subsequent use as a migrant ship taking hopeful gold prospectors and emigrants to Australia.
The contrast was obvious, a stark difference between the original accommodation for less than 200 transatlantic passengers and the later modifications to house 600-plus emigrants. There remained a class distinction however, as a white line marked the limit of 2nd and 3rd class passengers’ access to the aft deck above the 1st class saloon.
where you can watch Richard Westcott transform himself from Dapper Gentleman to Dame Matilda
Family historian Jennifer Cranfield talks about her great aunt, who was one of the few women suffragists who spoke on a national platform. £7.50
the Parish Church: launch of “Royal Leamington Spa, a History in 100 Buildings”, all day.
trying something new for this outing, with a lunchtime picnic and guided tour of the Rollright Stones. Meet at the Stones layby at 12.00 noon. Our guide will be David Shirt, Chairman of the Trustees of the Rollright Stones. No refreshments are provided, but you may like to bring a picnic, or Wyatts Farm Shop and café is about a mile or so away. The tour charge is £2.50 per person.
We moved off to encounter what seemed to be a disappointment at the locked church (of which more later), and then walked on to see the large and striking timber-framed house that everybody sees from the Southam road. We learned that it was once a coaching inn, and we thought we could see the filled-in archway to the yard behind, now occupied by a later bay window. The ostentatious timbering at the front is not carried on around the not-so-visible side away from the village green. It later belonged to the Sitwell family but was not their primary residence.
We wandered back toward the village centre, passing the Co-op (the third incarnation on the same site), the Green Man pub, several fine timber-framed cottages, and the Old School. Behind the church is the Manor Farm where our guide was brought up. It was our last scheduled stop but as we arrived back at the church we noticed activity around the previously locked church door, and we gate-crashed the helpers setting up for the next Sunday’s “Messy Church” service. The helpers were surprised but most welcoming, and some chairs were soon occupied by some of our party. The church is large and very light and airy, and the medieval masons had thoughtfully provided two watchers at a trip hazard they’d made.
Medieval CCTV? The imposing tower, minus its steeple