NEWSLETTER 5th December 2018
The forthcoming K&DLHG meeting is on 14th December (NB the second Friday of December, to avoid clashes with other Christmas activities). As well as the traditional mince pies and mulled wine, this is the year for our biennial Christmas Treats when a few members of the group and/or friends give us the benefit of their experiences in short presentations. These are invariably entertaining, the emphasis being on personal enthusiasms and experiences. This year we have three long-standing members sharing the spotlight: George Lokuciejewski describing his early years in the area; Peter Waters with reminiscences of his family business and the strange things customers say; and Bob Briggs whose presentation will throw a whole new light on the concept of multiple personality …….
We look forward to seeing you on the 14th to share our festive Christmas treats
Report on 16 November talk. Our member Brian Morgan gave us a well researched talk on The History of Moreton Hall at 
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.
Other Societies’ events
Warwick Market Square Museum, Thursday 29th November 5.00pm – 9.00pm Victorian Evening and Craft Fair
Warwick Market Square Museum. Thursday 6th December 1.00pm – 1.30pm Show and Tell: Roman Coins from the South Warwickshire Hoard, (these are from our local hoard)
Banbury Historical Society, Thursday 13th December, 7.30, Banbury Museum. Carol Anderson FSA Tranks, Slitters, and Fourchettes, the rise and fall of glove making in West Oxford.
Banbury Historical Society, Thursday January 10th 2019 Banbury Museum 7.30, Dr Rowena Archer The Rise and Rise of Alice Chaucer (d. 1475)
Portcullis History, Friday 11th 2019 Hatton Village Hall, 10.00am – 2.30pm Dr John Hunt Edward I and his Welsh Castles
KDLHG Committee Matters. There has been no committee meeting since the last newsletter.
The next committee meeting is at 7.30pm on February 11th 2019, in the Library at the Village Hall.
Our treasurer Richard Hurley is leaving the committee at the next AGM in March 2019, 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.
DF 05.12. 2018
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
