NEWSLETTER 8th May 2019
Forthcoming Meeting: May 17 Kineton Village hall 7.30
Our next meeting on 15th May is a double act by Martin Russell and Tony McKay entitled “Unravelling the Cropredy Campaign 1644”. This is about the English Civil War action commonly known as the “Battle of Cropredy Bridge”, when Parliamentary and Royalist 
forces fought a series of skirmishes in the Cherwell valley above Banbury. The title of the talk suggests that there was more to this exchange than the traditional label would imply, so we look forward to hearing what Martin and Tony have unearthed about this action. The topic chimes with the Warwickshire Record Office initiative to transcribe the claims for compensation following the Civil Wars – local parish returns are currently being transcribed by several of our members.
Report on the 26th April meeting 2019. Our member Tim Newcombe gave an illustrated talk on The Mills Family and the History of the Pillertons. Both the manors of Pillerton Priors and Pillerton Hersey were owned by the Mills family from the 1790 until the estate was sold in 1920. The last male owner, the Reverend Henry Mills, seems to have become neglectful as he aged, and was fined for not clearing ditches and allowing his properties to become dilapidated. Tim showed a photo of the Rev. Mills’ gamekeeper, Mr Butler, who keenly protected the estate’s rights. The estate was sold after WWI, like many others (for instance, Compton Verney), the victim of new social, political and financial pressures. Peter Waters led our thanks to Tim, commenting that his talk showed how much fascinating detail can be retrieved and brought to life about almost forgotten, but nonetheless significant local people and events.
Other Events.
World War 2 Oral Histories. A website founded by broadcaster and historian, Dan Snow, and author and broadcaster, James Holland, WarGen (http://wargen.org) is a crowd-sourced online repository of oral-history from the people who lived through World War 2. As well as containing varied stories from this fast disappearing generation, this group is now looking for individuals to join their volunteer team as interviewers in their local communities. They are also eager to hear from people who might have their own stories to tell. If you are interested in either becoming an interviewer or sharing your story, please contact Shane Greer at shane@wargen.org
Heritage and Culture Warwickshire (HCW) has just launched a new project called Warwickshire Bytes. The project has several strands – all digital. HCW are inviting people to get involved with online indexing of documents held at the County Record Office, starting with court depositions from the 19th and early 20th century. No prior knowledge is necessary and full support is given. Another aspect is Warwickshire in 100 objects and stories. HCW are asking people to contribute objects and stories to the Our Warwickshire website so they can create a People’s History of the county. Click here for more information:
Sunday 12 May Gold in them thar hills? Yes! Fool’s Gold!’ Why are the Burton Dassett Hills there? What’s in them? Who dug? When? Why? Are they magnetic? What’s that tower for?
Burton Dassett Hills. Meet 10.30 at Car Park near the Tower (approx 1-2 hours)
All-day parking £2. Part of WGCG GeoWeek in Warwickshire 5-12 May 2019
Thursday 16 May Warmington Heritage Group, Warmington Village Hall, 7.30pm: Ginny Davis on From the Pillory to the Prison Cell.
Monday 20 May Leamington History Group, Dormer Conference Centre, Dormer Place, 7.30pm: David Fry on A look at Leamington’s early postcards & the photographer who produced them.
June to October Southam Heritage Collection exhibition at Tithe Place, Southam, Playtimes Past. Tues, Fridays and Saturdays 10.00am to 12 noon
Thursday June 6 Oxhill Village Hall, 7.30pm David Freke on Warmington Man 2000 years BC (and some Romans)
Thursday 20 June Warmington Heritage Group, Warmington Village Hall, 7.30pm: Chris Hone on The Wroxton Mineral Railway.
Monday 24 June Leamington History Group, Dormer Conference Centre, Dormer Place, 7.30pm: Sheila Woolf on Here Come the Girls.
KDLHG Committee Matters.
The new committee met at 7.30pm on April 29th 2019, at 5 Church Houses, Manor Lane, by kind invitation of Catherine Petrie. We welcomed our new Treasurer, Ted Crofts, to the committee, and thanked Peter Waters for looking after our finances since November last year. TC briefly outlined the financial situation, membership numbers, and progress on changing bank signatories for our HSBC account.
We discussed the urgent need for new committee members to help run the Group effectively, and agreed to actively seek new recruits to the committee. DF pointed out that he has been Chairman now for almost 12 years, and announced that he will stand down at the 2020 AGM, but would still stand for committee membership. IS resigned her role as Secretary, with immediate effect, while remaining on the committee. There is an urgent need to fill the post of Secretary as soon as possible.
The publication of Peter Ashley-Smith’s book is at the proofs stage. Bob Bearman, Gill Ashley-Smith and David Beaumont were congratulated for their work on bringing this to fruition. An ISBN is still required and DF undertook to sort this out. Four hundred copies will be printed with a sale price of £9.99. Gill Ashley-Smith has generously donated any profits from the book to K&DLHG.
The progress towards procuring a home for our archives is painfully slow. A plan for the proposed new mezzanine at the back of the Village Hall stage has been prepared and awaits approval from the Village Hall Users Group and detailed estimates.
The next Committee meeting is on Monday 1st of July at 7.30pm, again at Catherine’s home.
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DF 08.05. 2019
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.
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.
