Messines revisited

The story of the model village of Messines, as reported in our September blog, generated lots of interest, with people wanting to know how the model was rediscovered, and how it was ever lost in the first place.

Well, it was found through the detective work of two local historians – Richard Pursehouse and Lee Dent, members of the Chase Project military history group – and involved a host of volunteers, several archaeological units, Staffordshire County Council and researchers from across the globe. Plus, of course, a dog.

In 1920 the process of winding down the military camps of Cannock Chase was well underway, with reusable materials being salvaged and anything of value sent for auction. Remarkably, the Messines model didn’t seem to be considered important by the authorities, and it was ignored but luckily not destroyed. With grass and tree roots starting to encroach over the following months, local Cubs and Scouts tried to clean the model up, but when the huts surrounding it were torn down, it was completely exposed to the elements and began to deteriorate.

The future of the model seemed a little brighter come the 1930s, when Ernest Groucott, an ex-Grenadier Guardsman, undertook some renovation work. As an army driver he had been active in the area during the war and had seen the model being constructed. By 1932 he was giving guided tours of the model for a small fee and a restoration fund had been set up.

But this memento of the First War could only decline further as Britain faced the Second, and while local children played on it in the 1940s and 50s, by the 1960s it had almost completely disappeared from view.

And so it remained until 2007, when Richard Pursehouse picked up what he thought was a stick to throw for his dog – and discovered it was in fact concrete.  Richard and Lee had been researching the model since discussing it on a trip to the Somme Battlefields the previous year, and had tried to find the site. However, seeing the overgrown condition of the area, with not a glimpse of the model to be seen, they had more or less decided (like the Council) that it had gone. But now, a little scraping revealed patches of concrete around the gorse bushes … how much of the model remained?

In December 2007 Staffordshire County Council commissioned Birmingham Archaeology to assess the area identified by the Chase Project.  With the help of Dolores Ho of the National Army Museum in New Zealand, Richard and Lee continued to research the model, establishing the existence of the viewing area on three sides and that it had been built ‘under instructions from Lieutenant Colonel J.G. Roache for the use of the Regimental School to instruct officers and NCOs in Topography’. The Chase Project was able to gather an extensive dataset of maps, photographs and diaries to help archaeologists in their task.

Finally, in 2013, a full excavation of the model took place, with the site being declared to be of international as well as national significance.  The model was freed of scrub and dirt and a laser scan carried out so that an exact 3D replica can be built.

Unfortunately, although largely made of concrete the model is actually very fragile, and it was decided that it had to be re-covered to protect it from the elements and damage from burrowing animals. It was therefore covered with a breathable membrane, followed by a layer of sand, rabbit-proof netting and finally specially selected soil.

In this way the Messines model has been made safe for future generations as they contemplate some of the most momentous events in British history.

 

 

The model under construction.

Photo courtesy of the  National Army Museum New Zealand
 

 

 

Detail of German strongpoint north-east of Messines.

Photo courtesy of the Chase Project

 

Site of the model cleared prior to excavation.

Photo courtesy of the Chase Project

 

 

 

Anyone with any information on the model can contact the Chase Project at thechaseproject@gmail.com. The group is now also researching the Staffordshire Tank Banks of the First World War.

Enigma: changing the course of history

This week we remember Colin Grazier and Francis Fasson, killed on the night of 30 October 1942 during a mission that turned out to be one of the most important of the Second World War.

By 1942 the biggest threat to the Allies was from U-Boats, which the Germans used in ‘wolf packs’ to attack shipping and disrupt supply convoys. Finding and destroying enemy submarines had become a top priority for British forces, with Churchill later commenting that the only thing that really frightened him during the war was the U-Boat peril. So when, on 30 October, a U-Boat was identified in the Mediterranean Sea, travelling westwards some 70 miles off the coast of Egypt, several destroyers were sent to hunt it down.

 

The U-Boat – later found to be the U-559 – was located by HMS Petard, which immediately launched an attack. It took almost 10 hours of fighting for the sub to be forced to the surface, but it eventually appeared in the destroyer’s search lights at around 10.40 pm. The crew were evacuated and placed under arrest, but not before they had scuttled the sub. Knowing there could be important information inside, Petard’s Captain, Lt Commander Mark Thorton, asked for volunteers to search the damaged vessel.

Three men, who must by this time have been physically and mentally exhausted, accepted the risk: Lieutenant Francis Fasson of Jedburgh, Able Seaman Colin Grazier from Tamworth and, just 16 years of age, NAAFI canteen assistant Tommy Brown. Jumping naked into the freezing ocean, they swam to the stricken sub. Fasson and Grazier went inside to search for anything which might prove useful, managing to pass books and documents to Brown, who stayed on the conning tower. But the U-559 finally went under, and Fasson and Grazier were unable to escape in time.  

They had, however, changed the course of the war, because the books they passed to HMS Petard contained code keys to the now-famous German Enigma machine.

Enigma was used to encrypt Nazi messages and was so sophisticated that it was calculated the odds of breaking the code without a key were 150 million million million to one. It had been invented as a commercial device in 1923, but was picked up and refined by the German military, who believed its ciphers to be unbreakable. The Poles, with their knowledge of German engineering industry, had managed to re-create an Enigma machine as early as 1933, and had had some success in reading the Wehrmacht’s messages. But, come the Second World War, analysts were unable to break the stream of information sent by German forces on land, sea and air.

It took three weeks for the code books taken by HMS Petard to reach Bletchley Park, the secret base set up by the British government to intercept and crack enemy communications. But because of the books, analysts at Bletchley were finally able to break the codes used by the Germans to plan U-Boat attacks. The breakthrough occurred on 13 December 1942, and within an hour of the news being given to the submarine tracking unit the position of 15 U-Boats in the Atlantic had been revealed.

It has been said that the war was shorted by as much as two years because of the actions of Fasson, Grazier and Brown, with countless lives saved. Certainly the number of British vessels sunk in the months following the discovery was halved. However, with anything to do with Bletchley Park being subject to the Official Secrets Act, their heroism was not widely publicised and they did not get the recognition they so deserved.

Lieutenant Fasson and Colin Grazier were recommended for posthumous Victoria Crosses but, as they did not actually die ‘in the face of the enemy’, were instead awarded the George Cross. Tommy Brown was awarded the George Medal. Tragically, he was killed in a house fire in North Shields in 1945.

Today Tamworth has begun to acknowledge the debt owed to Colin Grazier and his comrades, and visitors to the town might find themselves on Grazier Avenue, Fasson Close, Brown Avenue, Bletchley Drive or Petard Close. A memorial to the men has also been built in Church Square, where a service is held on Colin Grazier Memorial Day.

Lightning never strikes twice …

Blooming in health and strength I gazed

Where my Creator’s lightning blazed

Nor for a moment thought that He

Had such a shaft prepared for me

He gave command – the thunder peal’d

And my eternal doom was sealed

 

This is the epitaph of Hugh Dolman, buried at the Baptist chapel in Melbourne, Derbyshire. As you might gather from the inscription, Hugh was killed by lightning – unusual enough, you might think. But what makes this even more extraordinary is that Hugh wasn’t the only victim; his neighbour William Bailey was also killed. The incident, which ‘created a great sensation in the neighbourhood’, was recorded by local historian and writer, John Joseph Briggs in his diary on 19 June 1846: 

 

about 6 O’clock this evening occurred a most aweful and distressing circumstance. At that time a heavy shower came on accompanied by thunder and lightening. Two persons in Melbourne named Willm Baily (hair dresser) and Hugh Dolman (Baker) were standing in the Potters Street talking together, Baily being in his own garden within a few yards of his own house, and Dolman in the street, just opposite to him. Just at that moment a loud peal of thunder was heard which in an instant [was] followed by a flash of vivid lightening, which stuck these poor men, and only a few minutes elapsed before they were both corpses.

Baily was taken across the road to his own house and expired immediately and the only mark visible upon him was a small place on one of his cheeks. Dolman lived a few minutes after being struck, his clothes seemed scorched or burnt with the fluid and [literally] kept dropping from him piecemeal as he was carried up the street. His hair, whiskers, & also his shoes were also burnt. The faces of both men went black and discoloured immediately. Just before Mr Bailey left the house his wife remarked ‘I would not go out something may happen to you’. He replied naturally enough as many a one has before him ‘Oh! One knows thunder and lightning … occurs a hundred times and nobody ever hurt by it’. 

 

Hugh and William were buried side by side two days later. The fire gods hadn’t finished with Melbourne yet, though, because the day after that (22 June) Briggs writes about another curious episode:

 

Fearful thunder storm. A ball of fire descended at a distance of not more than 50 yards from the spot [where Hugh and William were killed] and entering a house set fire to a quantity of paper in a room where a sick person was lying and then passing though the chamber entered a lower room. In its passage a portion of a scythe attached to the wall was melted and then [it entered] the chimney [carrying] with it the iron apparatus employed to hang kettles &c upon.  

 

This time there was a happier ending, with the house’s occupants escaping unharmed.

Model Messines in Staffordshire

Staffordshire has been in the news again, with archaeologists uncovering a find unique in Britain ­– a perfectly scaled down model of a Belgian town and its surroundings as it appeared during the First World War.

The model – of Messines and the countryside around it – covers some 40 square yards and was used as a training aid, to help British troops visualise what awaited them before they went to war. But it was actually built by the enemy – German prisoners of war – when they were held at Brocton Camp.

Messines occupied a strategically important position on the Western Front, and was captured by the New Zealand Rifle Brigade after ferocious fighting in 1917.  Over 50,000 men (from both sides) were killed, wounded or reported as missing in action. On retuning to Brocton, the New Zealanders planned out the Messines model and supervised construction. As well as houses, shops and churches, the infamous trenches, railway lines and roads are all laid out with incredible precision, right down to the contours of the land.

After the war, the model was kept as a memorial but eventually it became overgrown. Unfortunately, once fully uncovered it will only be open for viewing for a short time – it’s so fragile it will have to be re-covered to preserve it for future generations.

 

The model as it appeared in 1918

Plagued

With a good few centuries between us and it, most of us will admit to being fascinated by the plague.  Although outbreaks were common, most people think of ‘the Plague’ as the Great Plague of London of 1665. And that outbreak could have spread across the north of England, were it not for the courageous actions of the villagers of Eyam in Derbyshire.

It started at the end of August, when apprentice tailor George Viccars received some cloth from London. A few days after its arrival he fell ill, and within a week he was dead (killed, we now know, because of infected fleas living in the cloth). The family he lodged with, and then the Thorpe family next door, and then the Wragg family across the road, became horribly ill, and the villagers realised the plague was among them. A few left. But, under the guidance of rector, William Mompesson and the previous incumbent, Thomas Stanley, rather than risk spreading the disease, the vast majority of the villagers bravely decided to place themselves under quarantine.

As the plague took hold, neighbouring villagers left food and other supplies at boundary markers outside Eyam or at Mompesson’s well (as it is now called) above the village. Money was left in pools of vinegar in hollowed-out stones. To reduce the risk of cross-infection, families were tasked with the awful job of burying their own dead, either in their gardens or nearby fields. Elizabeth Hancock buried the bodies of her husband and six children within eight days of each other; she carried them half a mile away to Riley’s farm. It was also decided to hold church services outside, at a natural amphitheatre on the outskirts of the village called Cucklett Delf, rather than everyone crowding into the church.

Cucklett Delf was also where Emmott Sydall would meet her sweetheart Rowland Torre, who was from the nearby village of Stoney Middleton. They would call to each other across the rocks that separated them, until one day Emmott did not appear.

Some 14 months after the death of George Viccars, the outbreak eventually burnt itself out. Estimates of how many of the villagers died vary, but Eyam church has records of 273 victims. The population of Eyam was thought to be about 350.  William Mompesson lived, although his wife Catherine, who nursed the sick, did not. Elizabeth Hancock, too, survived. The first person to enter Eyam from outside in the wake of the plague was Rowland Torre, looking for Emmott. But she had succumbed to the disease six months earlier.

Eyam had paid a terrible price, but the villagers achieved their aim. The plague did not spread to surrounding towns and villages, and a major outbreak had been averted. Today, the last Sunday in August is ‘Plague Sunday’ in Eyam. An open-air service is held at Cucklett Delf to commemorate the sacrifice of the villagers.

Little Bess and a kind man’s grave

A few years before the events at Eyam, Congleton in Cheshire was suffering its own outbreak of a particularly virulent plague. First to be affected were the Laplove family, but the disease spread like wildfire. Mayor John Bradshaw (later to become infamous as the judge who sentenced King Charles I to death) banned all alehouses and lodging houses from taking in travellers from Derby and other areas suspected of being the source of the disease. A man was employed to shoot all dogs seen in the streets.

At the start, the sick were shut up in their own houses, guarded by wardens. Later, they were taken to specially built ‘pest-houses’, which were purged with pitch, tar and frankincense. They were each awarded twopence a day by the town for their care.

Heroine of this story is ‘Little Bess’ (also referred to in some quarters as ‘Lancashire Bess’, so presumably she was not a native of Congleton), who alone devotedly nursed the sick with no thought for her own safety.  The town accounts show Little Bess was given small amounts of money for ‘necessaries for the sick or the dead’ (including a bowl to hold liquorice and wine vinegar), and to support herself and her mother through the crisis.

The outbreak lasted two years and Congleton became so deserted that, it is recorded, grass grew in the streets. In spite of Little Bess’s efforts the Laplove household was almost completely wiped out – Astbury parish registers show that five of them were buried in two days. John Bradshaw’s accounts book shows that he sent money for ‘Laplove’s little girl in her weakness’, and his wife sent blankets. With the help of Little Bess, this child survived, but we do not know how many others did.

The parish register of Malpas, in the west of Cheshire, has a poignant entry regarding one man’s death at the hands of the plague. It reads: ‘Richard Dawson, being sick of the plague, and perceiving he must die, rose out of his bed and made his grave, and caused his nephew to cast straw into the grave, which was not far from the house, and went and laid down in the said grave, and caused clothes to be laid upon him, and so departed out of this world. This he did because he was a strong man, and heavier than his said nephew and a serving-wench were able to bury. He died about the 24th of August. This was I credibly told he did, 1625.’  
 

Some cures for the plague

The panic felt by our ancestors when they realised the plague had arrived must have been overwhelming. Powerless though they were against it, ‘cures’ abounded. Here are a couple ­– 

Take Walnuts, when the green Husk is on them, and before the shell is hardened underneath, put them, when bruised to steep in white Wine eight days: then with some Baum, Rue and Tops of Fetherfew and Wormwood a little bruised, put them in an Alembick and distil them: then when you drink an ounce and a half of water, which you may do, morning, noon and night, put it into some perfumed Comfits, and stir them well about till they are dissolved.

Take water of Scabious, Endive, Rue and red Roses, of each, four ounces, white Dittany, Tormentile, white Coral, Gentian and Bole Armoniack, with Terrfigillata – reduce those that are to be powdered separately; infuse them in the warm water in a glass vessel, and drink about an ounce at a time pretty warm, keeping the body warm after it. 

Margaret Blackwell, who came through the plague at Eyam, attributed her survival to the somewhat simpler remedy of drinking hot bacon fat.

 

 

'Plague cottages', Eyam. The end house was occupied by George Viccars, and was where the plague started. The house with the white front door, Rose Cottage, belonged to the Thorpe family. All nine died.

, 

 

Graves of the Hancock family, at Riley's field.



Guides at war

This picture from 1916 made us do a double take.

It’s actually a bike stretcher, used by the Guides – in this case the 1st Alderley Edge Company – to ferry people to and from hospital during the First World War.

The ‘Girl Scouts’, as they were called, had only been around a few years at this point, the movement having been inaugurated by Baden Powell in 1909. 1st Alderley – headed by a Miss Tipping – were one of the earliest groups to be established in Cheshire, along with Macclesfield (under Captain G.H. Owen), and Birkenhead and Rock Ferry (with Mary Crossfield, Ida New, Winifred Howard and Miss Raskin).  

As you would imagine, Guides worked tirelessly to help the war effort. As well as needlework, laundry work, cleaning and cooking, they  looked after children whose parents were abroad, typed documents, ran market gardens, and collected flax (used in making aeroplane wings) and herbs (for medicines). They  built trestle bridges, felled trees and, as shown in the photo below, collected salvage and recycled waste. They raised funds for convalescent homes, equipped and ran hospitals, and prepared and worked in houses for refugees.

 

 

And, come the Second World War, they did it all over again. From potato digging and hop picking to helping maintain the blackout, Guides more than lived up to their promise to ‘lend a hand’. Their fundraising really made a difference: in 1940 Guide Gift Week raised more than £48,000, double the amount earmarked  to provide two air ambulances and a lifeboat (Cheshire’s contribution of over £1,000 was among the highest in the country). The two ambulances were handed over to the RAF and the lifeboat arrived just in time to take part in the evacuation of Dunkirk – it was named Guide of Dunkirk.

 

After the war, it was hoped a fledgling Guide movement in Germany would begin to heal old wounds, and German Guides from the British Zone visited Cheshire. Local reports at the time say they were ‘impressed by the warmth of their welcome and by the kindness and courtesy that the English people showed’. So did Guides also help in the long process of building peace.

 

 

A family affair? The curious case of Perkin v. Birchenough

The Queen and Hezekiah Perkin v. John Birchenough was heard at Stafford Winter Assizes on 16 December 1865. At first sight the case seems to be a straightforward robbery – Birchenough was a petty criminal who had already served time in Derby gaol for attempted larceny – but a little digging has revealed there may well be more to matters than first meets the eye.  

The story starts on 28 September 1865, when Hezekiah Perkin, keeper of an eatinghouse in Spout Street (now St Edward Street), Leek, rose at 6 a.m. Going downstairs he found the back door closed but unbolted – he was sure he had left it bolted the previous night.

Just then he heard his wife calling from upstairs. On getting up Louisa Perkin had discovered that her clothes were not where she had left them the previous night: ‘I picked them off the floor and thought they felt light – I examined my pocket and found that my purse and money were gone.’ The purse contained two watchkeys, a half-sovereign and some silver, and there were a further five shillings wrapped in paper in a pocket.

Hezekiah investigated further and found that the trap door from the coal cellar into the street had been unfastened and that ‘a candle had been used about the house during the night’. A candlestick and a partly burned candle, usually left on the chimney piece, were on a table near the back door and a partly burnt match (‘we generally cut them off with scissors’) was on the cellar steps.

The Perkins took an inventory and discovered that two silver watches, one with a gold Albert chain and key,  and the other (a new one) with a silver guard and gold seal, were missing. Going into the shop, Hezekiah discovered that a bag containing ‘£1.15.0 in money and 5/- in copper’ was also missing off the counter, ‘the last shilling of which I had counted and placed there the previous night’.

Immediately the couple thought of John Birchenough, who lived ‘in the immediate neighbourhood and had been formerly in the habit of going to the house’. Louisa reported the break-in to the police. However, they then seem to take matters into their own hands. A week or so later, on 7 October, Louisa went to see one of John Birchenough’s friends, William Flanagan, silk twister and, as we shall see, dab hand at ‘toss’. Louisa found Flanagan in the Bull’s Head in Spout Street and told him that, if Birchenough were to return the missing items, they would not press charges. As a further sweetener, she let it be known she would give 10 shillings for the return of the watches. Their conversation was heard by Elizabeth Boothby, wife of the landlord.

William Flanagan’s statement to the police (by this time he was under commitment for three months on a charge of assault, so he didn’t have far to go) confirmed that he had spoken to Birchenough after meeting with Louisa. Perhaps not surprisingly, Birchenough had denied any knowledge of the missing items. Flanagan told him ‘if he had them we could put them right and have no further bother’. He also told police he had won nineteen shillings from Birchenough gambling at toss a couple of days earlier, first in the Talbot Inn and then behind Alsop’s shade. (A shade was the local name for the sheds where threads were twisted.) Birchenough had paid up with a half-sovereign and silver which he took from a purse – perhaps not the best move in the circumstances.

Later on, in the evening of 7 October, Mrs Boothby sent for John Birchenough, who by this time must surely have been sick of the whole saga. ‘He came to my house,’ she told police. ‘I told him Flanagan was locked up and asked the prisoner to give me Mrs Perkin’s watches. … I said if he did not wish  to give them to Mrs Perkin he might leave them in my hands and I would see she had them back. [He] immediately went away and in a few minutes returned and gave me the watches standing at my parlour door.’

It would seem that things had been pretty much sorted out without any involvement from the police, but on 9 October John Birchenough was arrested at his house in Jacob’s Alley by Superintendent Thomas Woollaston. Birchenough denied any knowledge of the burglary or watches but was charged that he did ‘feloniously and burglariously break and enter the dwellinghouse of Hezekiah Perkin’. The prosecution brief notes that if the burglary charge did not stick then receiving stolen goods could certainly be proved. This wasn’t necessary, though. John Birchenough was found guilty and sentenced to six months with hard labour.

So ends the story. But we were intrigued to discover that after his release John Birchenough moved from Leek to Woolstanton and began to call himself John Perkin. A brief look at the records revealed that Birchenough was actually John’s mother’s name and they both lived with a Joseph Clowes Perkin; Hezekiah Perkin had a brother of that name. So it seems likely that Hezekiah Perkin and John Birchenough were actually related, or at least known to one another. In fact they may well have been uncle and nephew. 

Which raises a whole host of questions. Why didn’t the Perkins tell the police John was a relative? Hezekiah’s statement merely says: ‘I know the prisoner. He lives in a yard behind my house.’ Did the police know but not record the fact?  Hezekiah and Louisa seemed to go to some lengths to sort the matter out themselves – because Birchenough was family? In which case, why go to the police at all?

Or is the whole thing a coincidence of names, a genealogist’s nightmare?  If anyone has researched this family, please let us know!