So who was Miss Edith Townley of 13 Rectory Place in Woolwich and how did she spend the Christmas of 1917?

Now I went looking for number 13 Rectory Place yesterday which was home to Miss Edith Townley in 1917.

Writing to Edith in 1917

It is there on the old maps of the area, along with the street directories and looks to have been a grand property.

In fact walking up Rectory Place towards St Mary’s Street I reckon I might well have felt quite out of place.

But there is no crime in walking past and looking at a posh house, except that none of them are there now.

Instead there are some blocks of flats which is all a bit of a shame.

Along Rectory Place in 1872

But then Miss Townley also seems to be lost to history.

According to this wartime postcard Fred was expecting to be home on leave and was so confident of Christmas in Woolwich that he told her not to send the parcel.

The problem is simply that I can’t find her anywhere in Woolwich for 1917, and that nu 13 had been the residence of the Rev Charles E Dove as late as 1914 but he was also in the habit of changing his address and can be found at one time or another living in several addresses both in Woolwich and further afield.

Added to which there were a lot of Townley’s living in both London and serving in the armed forces.

"Dear Edith .........."

All of which might seem to make this a bit of a non story but I think not.

There will be someone who can help me with when those blocks of flat went up, replacing the grander properties which included nu 13 and with a bit more patience I might be lucky and identify Fred and in turn come closer to finding Edith.

In the meantime I have to say I have discovered a bit of Woolwich I never knew existed and might get to know more about the postcard which set me off on the search.

It belongs to my old friend David Harrop who recently purchased it as part of a batch he found on eBay.

Miss Edith Townley

I look forward to seeing it and getting to know the picture on the front, which may not help me discover anything more about either of them but will perhaps give me a clue to the type of photograph Fred liked and thought Edith might enjoy.

We shall see.

Location; Woolwich, London

Pictures; postcard, December 1917, from the collection of David Harrop, and detail of Rectory Place, from the OS for London, 1862-72, courtesy of Digital Archives Association, http://digitalarchives.co.uk/

William Barefoot and a day in the archives of the Peoples’ History Museum in Manchester

William Brefoot, date unknown

Now I have to confess that for me William Barefoot was just a name on a plaque in the Pleasaunce, and if pushed I could also point to William Barefoot Drive and a small park in Plumstead.

All of which is  particularly embarrassing given that we were both members of the Woolwich Labour Party and Mr Barefoot had along connection to Eltham as a councillor and to the history of Woolwich.

And it was while I was in the archives of the Peoples’ History Museum that I decided to take a break from researching the Great War and instead begin to learn more about this remarkable man.*

I knew that he had been born in 1872 that his father was a sadler and that the family had lived on Frances Street not far from the Dockyard and I vaguely also knew that he had been a councillor for Eltham for 33 years and was the Mayor of Woolwich not once but three times, all of which is an impressive record of municipal service.

But there was much more.

A Hall, Will Crooks 7 W Barefoot, 1910

“Will Barefoot fought West Woolwich several times without success, but it was as Agent for the Borough Party that he lived and died. 

From the days of his apprenticeship in the Royal Arsenal he was identified with the Trade Union, Socialist, Co-operative and Municipal life of the Borough.  

Woolwich Labour Representation Committee was one of the first to enlist ‘individual members’ and made national history in 1902 when Will Crooks was first returned to Westminster.  

Success followed in every direction and came primarily as a result of Will Barefoot‘s genius for organization.  
He was supported in all efforts by his wife and it was a poignant circumstance that Mrs Barefoot died within a few weeks of her husband’s passing.”**

He worked alongside Will Crooks the first Labour MP for Woolwich and would have been an active participant in many of the great events of the early 20th century from the election of Mr Crooks to the General Strike of 1926.

And during the Great War he was active on the London Food Vigilance Committee.

Food Vigilance Committees had sprung up across the country as a means of drawing attention to the sharp rise in the cost of living and set forth a clear set of policies, demanding greater control by both the Government and local authorities of food and fuel along with the participation of the Labour movement.

Inside the archives, 

So for me Mr Barefoot has come out of the shadows, and I rather think I will be spending more time in the Archives & Study Centre calling up material on his life and contribution.

“The Labour History Archive & Study Centre (LHASC) is the main specialist repository for research into the political wing of the labour movement.  

It holds the archives of working class organisations from the Chartists to New Labour, including the Labour Party and the Communist Party of Great Britain.  

From Salford, 2013

The collections provide an insight into the social, political and economic life of the last two centuries.

As well as the archives of political parties and leftwing pressure groups, LHASC collects the personal papers of radical politicians, writers and activists.  

The archives complement the objects, photographs and banners found in the museum collections and researchers may well find material of interest in both.*

William Barefoot Memorial, 2013

All of which may seem a long way from Woolwich, but I think not.

Sitting there yesterday reading the same material he would have handled I was reminded that we shared quite a lot.

Pictures; photographs of William Barefoot, Will Crooks and A Hall along with the interior of the study centre and view of the Museum from Salford, courtesy of Archives & Study Centre, at the People’s History Museum, Manchester, http://www.phm.org.uk/ and  William Barefoot Memorial in Well Hall Pleasunce, from the collection of Chrisse Rose, 2013

* Archives & Study Centre, at the People’s History Museum, Manchester, http://www.phm.org.uk/

** Report of the Annual Conference held the Central Hall Westminster May 25 to 28th, 1942

Photographs from the Royal Herbert during the Great War ............ a unique album of pictures

The Royal Herbert, date unknown

Now the story of the Royal Herbert has just got a lot more exciting and that has a lot to do with a fascinating photograph album from the Great War.

It belongs to my old friend David Harrop who has a unique collection of memorabilia covering both world wars as well as the history of the Post Office.

And today I am looking through it with the hope that some at least of the men and the nurses in the pictures can be traced and their stories uncovered.

Christmas Day, 1915

In time I might even be able to discover the nurse responsible for the album.

A few of the nurses are named and tantalizingly two pictures are captioned “myself” so the search is on which may be made easier as the Red Cross continues to add to its online data base of those who served during the Great War.

And then there are the large number of photographs of soldiers in their “hospital blues” recovering on the wards, a few party scenes and handful from soldiers who had recovered and left the hospital.

Summer, 1916

Together they help reveal a little bit of life in the Royal Herbert during 1915 and 1916.

Given the quality of the cameras and the age of the pictures some images have not fared so well but even the poorest have a story to tell.

One of my favourites is of Sister Thomson and a group of men on a ward on Christmas Day in 1915 along with a much faded image of the garden in the summer of 1916.

Now these albums were quite common but I suspect not that many have survived.

Album cover

David has two more which contain comments, poems and drawings of men recovering from wounds and illnesses.

One remains a mystery but the other comes from a Red Cross Hospital in Cheltenham and it has been possible to track  some of the men who made a contribution.

Their stories are as varied as I am sure will be the ones from the Herbert and include a young Canadian who survived the war and went home to live a successful and productive life and another who is buried in the military hospital outside Cairo.

And like all good stories led my friend Susan who lives in Canada to tell the story of that young Canadian and in so doing brought his drawing and his words  off the pages of the Cheltenham book and back from the past.

Now that I have to say was both exciting and moving.

The Royal Herbert album is different in that it only has photographs but in looking through it I have made a link with a hospital I knew well and which at one point in the 1970s treated our mother.

All of which makes it that bit special.

David's permanent exhibition can be seen in the Remembrance Lodge in Southern Cemetery, Manchester and currently features a collection of material commemorating the Manchester Blitz.

Pictures; from the Royal Hebert collection, 1915-16 courtesy of David Harrop

*Blighty, http://chorltonhistory.blogspot.co.uk/search/label/Blighty

Connections ...... Edith Nesbit of Well Hall and William Barefoot Labour politican and councillor for Eltham

Edith Nesbit, circa 1890

Now I like the way that history continues to surprise you, often taking you in directions which you could not have imagined.

Until recently I was not aware that Edith Nesbit had lived at Well Hall and knew only that she had written the Railway Children.

But she was far more than just someone who wrote children’s books.

Her marriage appears to be what we might today describe as an open one and she adopted two children from her husband’s relationship with another woman who was employed as their house keeper.

She was one of the founder members of the Fabian Society, a member of the Social Democratic Federation and wrote and spoke regularly on socialism.

Amongst her friends were H.G. Wells, Bernard Shaw and the Webb’s, all of whom visited the house in Well Hall.

She was also a member of the local Labour Party and it was here she met Tommy Tucker an engineer on the Woolwich Ferry, who she married three years after the death of her husband Hubert.

All of which fits nicely as like Edith, Hubert and Tommy I was also a member of the same local Labour Party.

Woolwich Labour Party was formed in 1903.  At that time the Woolwich constiuency took in Woolwich and Eltham, and even when it was split between Woolwich East and Woolwich West for the 1918 General Election the Labour Party took the decision to stay as one party.

So when I joined in 1966 aged just 16 I was walking with Edith, Hubert and Tommy.

William Barefoot, date unknown

And also William Barefoot who will have known Edith and may well have been a guest at her home in Well Hall.

He was one of the leading forces in the Woolwich Labour Party having been its secretary from 1903 till 1941.*

He had become secretary of the Woolwich Trades Council in 1899 a post he held until 1921, was editor of The Woolwich Labour Journal and the Pioneer a weekly paper.**

Now if I were prone to idle speculation I might well go ‘off on one’ pondering on how well Ms Nebit and

Mr Barefoot knew each other and whether she contributed to either The Woolwich Labour Journal and the Pioneer.

Now the Greenwich Heritage Centre holds both the Journal and the Pioneer but the collection only cover the years 1919-1926, and I am not sure when she left Well Hall.

I know she married Mr Tucker in 1917 and later moved to Friston in East Sussex, and later to East Kent, and died in 1924.

That said I shall go digging elsewhere for both journals and the first port of call will be the archives of the People’s Museum.

Now it would really be nice to discover some of her political writing which in turn will have crossed William Barefoot’s desk and so I shall go looking.

Pictures; Edith Nesbit courtesy of The Edith Nesbit Society, http://www.edithnesbit.co.uk/ and William Brefoot, courtesy of Archives & Study Centre, at the People’s History Museum, Manchester, http://www.phm.org.uk/

*William Barefoot and a day in the archives of the Peoples’ History Museum in Manchester, http://chorltonhistory.blogspot.co.uk/2015/03/william-barefoot-and-day-in-archives-of.html

** ORIGINS AND DEVELOPMENT OF THE LABOUR PARTY AT LOCAL LEVEL, The Woolwich Labour Party, 1903-53, Dr Roger Eatwell, 1982,  http://www.microform.co.uk/guides/R97253.pdf

Off to the “flicks” in the winter of 1913 and a challenge for today

Now on a dismal Saturday afternoon in Eltham during the winter of 1913 I might well have decided to take myself off to the Picturedrome where I could have seen epics like the Battle of Waterloo, stories drawn from great novels like Zola’s Germinal or melodramas loosely based on the Old Testament along with documentaries about nature, disasters at sea and much more.

The Battle of Waterloo, 1913

The obvious choice would have been the Eltham Cinema on the corner of the High Street and Westmount Road, which was run by Mr Robert Frederick Bean and which had only been open for a few months.

But with the help of the tram I might instead of ventured off into Woolwich, Greenwich and even Plumstead.

And as much as the film might have attracted me so might the name of the cinema.

Some had names which reflected this new and exciting form of entertainment ranging from the Kinemacolor Palace to those incorporating the word “electric” of which my favourite was the Bijou Electric Theatre, while others traded on exotic places like the Trocadero, and the Alhambra Pavilion.

Germinal, 1913

Most also incorporated the title “Pictuedrome” and some went through frequent name changes.

But what they all had in common was that magic of sitting in the dark and seeing moving pictures many times life size telling stories of adventure, romance set in faraway places which for most people were just names on a map.

So with that in mind the choice was pretty wide.  I could have wandered over to Plumstead and visited the Imperial on Plumstead Road or taken a chance on the Windsor Electric Theatre on Maxey Road but equally could have been drawn to either the Globe on the Common or the Cinematograph at numbers 144-6 the High Street.

Greenwich offered up another three and Woolwich had six.

Judith, 1913

A century on I rather think it might be fun to go looking for these ten.  Sadly in the case of the Three Crowns, the New Cinema and the Premier Electric Theatre they are just listed as Woolwich, but the remaining seven have full addresses.

In Woolwich there was the Arsenal Kinema, Beresford Square, the Premier Electric Theatre, at 126 Powis Street, and the New Cinema at 93 New Road.

And that just left the Greenwich three, which were the Trafalgar Cinema, 82 Trafalgar Road, Chapman’s Pictures Bridge Street, the Greenwich Hippodrome, Stockwell Street, and the Theatre Royal, on High Street.

The Terrors of the Jungle, 1913

And there is the challenge.  Not that any will still exist, but armed with a modern map, a corresponding map for 1913 and a street directory for the same year it should be possible to do a bit of detective work.

Location; Eltham, Plumstead, Greenwich and Woolwich.







Pictures; stills from films available to watch in 1913, from  The Kinematograph Year Book*

*The Kinematograph Year Book Program Diary and Directory 1914, http://www.bfi.org.uk/sites/bfi.org.uk/files/downloads/kinematograph-year-book-program-diary-and-directory-1914-2014-09-18.pdf

The Woolwich we have lost

My sister and her husband had warned me just how much the centre of Woolwich had changed but when you don’t go there very often it is easy to forget that places can undergo a massive transformation.

So I asked them to go out armed with an old book of Woolwich plus my pictures from the blog and record just what has happened.

This they did and here is the first of a new Woolwich series, starting with Wellington Street which I featured a few months ago with a picture postcard from 1916.*

I say 1916 but the image may date back to 1907 which shouldn’t surprise us.  Once the picture had been taken the cards could have a long shelf life, so while the one in the collection has a postmark date of 1916, another source puts the moment the photographer captured the scene a full nine years earlier.**

If it was 1907 then the Town Hall which dominates the skyline was opened the year before by Will Crook the MP for Woolwich.  The Town Hall included a public hall, central library, public baths a police and municipal offices.

And as Colin’s picture shows little apart from the Town Hall on Wellington Street has survived.  The Old Woolwich Hippodrome seen next to the Town Hall had a short life of just 23 years.

It was an impressive brick building dressed in stone and ran to three stories.   An iron canopy bearing the name of the theatre covered the steps leading up to the central entrance.

Another canopy continued along the sidewall with a sign across its face reading TWICE NIGHTLY AT 6.40 & 9.10. More signage appeared above the canopy reading WMF GRANT & CO. TWICE NIGHTLY also appears at the top of the side wall.

And in our picture the signs advertise Will Evans who according to some was one of our finest comedians and Pantomime stars and was the author of many sketches and songs.

Sadly there is little on him and nothing about his appearance at the Woolwich Hippodrome.

And as for the Woolwich Hippodrome, its life as a variety hall was just 23 years but as a cinema it fared even worse, closing in 1939 when it was demolished to make way for a new cinema which with the outbreak of war was not built until 1955.

Now I am not some crusty old lover of old buildings just because they are old but I have to say those that flanked and stood opposite the Town Hall are on a human scale which cannot be said of the tall brick and concrete slabs that have pretty much turned the street into a canyon.

But perhaps I am being too harsh, it may be that Colin’s other pictures show a better and cleaner Woolwich than the one I remember.  We shall see.

And in the meantime our Elizabeth tells me that "since we took the pictures of Woolwich, the building next to the Town Hall has been demolished. Not sure what is there now. I remember going there when it was known as Flamingos, mind you that was some time ago."

*At the Woolwich Hippodrome sometime between 1907 and 1916, http://chorltonhistory.blogspot.co.uk/2013/08/at-woolwich-hippodrome-sometime-between.html

**Evans, Brian, Woolwich in old photographs, 1994

Picture, Wellington Street, 1907-1916, courtesy of Mark Flynn, http://www.markfynn.com/london-postcards.htm and Wellington Street from the collection of Colin Fitzpatrick

Lost Woolwich .......... no 4 a football team

Now of all the places I knew in my youth I have to say Woolwich is one of those that has  undergone some of the most radical change.

So much so that big chunks of it I have difficulty recognising.

The Arsenal, Powis Street and even the old Pie and Mash shop were as familiar to me as they were to generations of people who grew up in Woolwich and are now just distant memories.

So with that in mind I have returned to images of a time before now.

And so here for those in my family like Geoff who follows Charlton, the odd couple who watch Millwall and Colin and Lee who travel over the river is that local football team from 1905.

Picture; from Woolwich Through Time, Kristina Bedford, Amberley 2014

When Gas was glamorous ............ in the show rooms of the South Metropolitan Gas Company at 36 Powis Street

Now the gas cooker, the central heating and the gas fired water boiler are pretty much taken for granted by most people.

Even given the ever increasing price of the stuff many of us will just get with using it, thankful that barring an accident the systems will come on at the push of a button or turn of the tap.

Most appliances are fairly utilitarian come in a number of shades of white and just do the business.

But back in the late 19th and early twentieth century’s gas could still be glamorous and it was the fuel of the future.

Read any of the handouts from the municipally controlled gas boards and you enter a world of cheap clean and safe living whether it be lighting the home or feeding the family.

Manchester Corporation both sold and rented gas cookers and in time did the same for electricity offering also very competitive rates for wring old houses.

All of which takes me to the show rooms of the South Metropolitan Gas Company at 36 Powis Street in Woolwich.

The South Metropolitan Gas Company was founded in 1829 and began an ambition programme of building gasworks at Vauxhall, Bankside and Thames St, Greenwich. These were extended by mergers with other companies, and bring me nicely back to the show rooms.*

The provision of gas along with its appliances was big money and to win over customers the show rooms had to look the part.

So I shall leave you with these scenes, all from postcards produced by Tuck & Sons in a series titled London, South Metropolitan Gas Company.

Now there is a piece of hard sell which can’t be bettered.

And just to doubly remind you of all the wonders of the place each picture post card had the times of opening on the back.

I think even I would have been impressed.

Pictures; from Tuck & Sons in a series titled London, South Metropolitan Gas Company, courtesy of Tuck DB, http://tuckdb.org/

*The National Archives, http://www.nationalarchives.gov.uk/a2a/records.aspx?cat=1866-sesom&cid=0#0

Stories of the Great War from Eltham and Woolwich ............. nu 3 the ex soldiers

Now until recently I had never come across the story of those groups of ex servicemen who campaigned during and after the Great War. 

Three Woolwich men circa 1900

The first had been formed in Blackburn and was the National Association of Discharged Sailors and Soldiers and its main aims were a demand for employment training, better pensions, and greater government consideration for the problems of discharged men.*

This was followed later in the year by the formation of the National Federation of Discharged and Demobilised Sailors and Soldiers by various London-based veterans groups opposed to the Review of Exceptions Act, which made it possible for men invalided out of the armed forces to be re-conscripted.

It adopted the slogans "Every man once before any man twice" and "Justice before charity"

Lastly there were the Comrades of the Great War which had strong links with both the establishment and in particular the Conservative Party.  Its executive was dominated by MPs and ex officers in direct contrast to the other two.

Top five contests, 1918

At the General Election in 1918 the Federation mounted candidates in 30 constituencies across the country. In five they polled between 47 and 20% of the poll and in seven came 2nd.

Across London their fortunes varied with the Federation achieving 34% in Norwood, down to 6% in Southwark North.

They didn’t put up candidate in either of the two Woolwich seats, possibly because of the popularity of Will Coooks who was elected unopposed and in the new Woolwich West seat which have been deemed unpromising.

But in Woolwich the Federation had a very strong membership and like its other branches across the country organised to protect the rights of ex servicemen.  In Manchester the group were in dispute with several departments the Corporation over promises of reemployment to men who had enlisted while in Woolwich the focus was on the employment rights of disabled ex servicemen at the Arsenal whose jobs were threatened by the practice offering work to pre-war employees.

The Royal Herbert, 1915-1916

The protests included a petition to the King which was presented to Princess Mary when she visited the Victory Club for girls in Beresford Street and demonstration march to the House of Commons.

“With bands and banners, the 11,000 demonstrators made their way [from Beresford Square] to Westminster Bridge where they were stopped by the police and reminded of the Defence of the Realm Act regulation that processions within one mile of the Houses of Parliament were not permitted.  But the men were not to be put off; and thus began what the ‘Pioneer’ described as the ‘The Battle of Westminster Bridge.’

For a solid hour there was fighting as the darkness fell; police with truncheons and batons, vans full of disabled men trying to fight their way through, broken tramcar windows and ginger beer bottles, and pushing and kicking and pummelling – all the ingredients of a riot excepting only the reading of the Act with Lyons’ teashop at Belverdere Road corner a casualty station. Such was the confusion that when Mr Gilden, secretary of the ‘Demonstration Committee came over Westminster Bridge with the news that the notices had been withdrawn he was not allowed through the police cordon.”**

More Woolwich people, circa 1900

Despite angry headlines in the press the Government upheld the actions of the police refused a Labour Party’s call for an enquiry and saw several men charged and fined including Albert Mitchell an Arsenal worker who was fined 40s and £3 costs for breaking a tramcar window.

The Woolwich branch was also instrumental in organising a “comprehensive drumhead memorial service for the fallen on Woolwich Common .... where a crowd of some 50,000 was assembled... With thirty bands and several massed choirs, fifty-two local organizations and sixty-four trade union bands [it] provided what the Kentish Independent described as the most inspiring sight ever witnessed on the Common.”**

Pictures; Woolwich men and a market scene from Woolwich Through Time, Kristina Bedford, Amberley 2014, men in the Royal Herbert, 1915-1916 from the Royal Hebert collection, 1915-16 courtesy of David Harrop

*The Lion and the Poppy:  British Veterans, Politics and Society, 1921-1939, Nial Barr

** The Woolwich Story, 1970, E. F. E. Jefferson.

From Plumstead to Croydon via Canada, and the Western Front ........ with a sideways trip to Rochdale

I am looking at a picture of Alfred Frederick Shrub, taken in the studios of Joseph Gothard.

The story of this young man is a fascinating one, which like many of his generation ended on the Western Front during the Great War.

The photograph belongs to my old friend David Harrop, who because he knows I grew up in Woolwich, thought I would be interested.

And so, began a journey across the early 20th century, taking me by stages to Canada, Croydon and on to New Zealand and Rochdale, and linking together the young Alfred with his photographer.

On the surface there was not much to go on.

The address of the studio was 45 Plumstead Road, which was that short street between Burrage Road and Maxey Road facing the Royal Arsenal.

Sadly, none of the properties still exist, and judging from the historical records Mr. Gothard did not linger over long  in Woolwich.

Nor would it seem did Alfred’s family.  I know they were here by 1900, because of the inscription on the back of the photograph, and the census record for 1901 which has them at 9 Nyanza Street, but they may not have stayed much longer.

And the clue is suggested by the admission book of Plumstead Road school which has Alfred attending from November till just December 1902.  There after the next official record is of them living in Croydon in 1911.

But it is the Canadian connection which has yet to be fully researched, because I know from Alfred’s military records that he was born in Braccebridge, Winnipeg, in Manitoba in 1896, which it turns out is incorrect.

Braccebridge is in Ontario, and was the first of the mistakes on his military records.

I suppose the family must have spent time there, and given that his father was a general labourer Mr. Shrub may have been working on a civil engineering project, or they have just taken a chance on the New World.

Either way they were back by 1900 to have the picture taken in Mr. Gothard’s studio and for some one to write on the back of the photograph, “This his Alfred Frederick Shrub 4 years  old 1900”, and for some else to add “WW1 Casualty, The Queens Regiment Pte No S/5792”

The military records show that he enlisted in the October of 1914,  aged 18, and died on March 18th, 1915.

But here there is a slight confusion given that a Private Alfred Frederick Shrube was present at the wedding of James Edward Lawrence, also a soldier and Eva Amelia Shrub on September 2nd, 1917, at Christ Church, Croydon.

It may be a coincidence, but our Alfred had a sister by that name and the family had been in Croydon six years earlier.

It is one of those twisty turny stories I like, made that bit more interesting because his mother was born in India in 1869.

And because the search for Mr. Gothard was equally messy.  He came from Yorkshire, was in Norfolk in 1891, listing his occupation as photographer, a decade later was in Plumstead, only to move again to Rochdale in 1911, with his New Zealand wife and child.

All of which leaves me to say I doubt we have heard the end of either families.

Not least because my friend Tricia has promised  to go looking n the archives, down at Greenwich.

Location; pretty much all over

Pictures; picture postcard of Alfred Frederick Shrub, 1900 from the collection of David Harrop

“At present we do nothing at all other than parade” ......... sharing a day in 1915 with George Davison at Woolwich Barracks*

Mr and Mrs Davison and their son, 1916 Ireland

Now I went looking for anything that might have happened on October 27 1915 but the databases proved unrewarding.

“Unfortunately” according to one “there are no historic events for this date” other than it was the day that Herschel Saltzman was born and as everyone knows he  “was a Canadian theatre and film producer best known for his mega-gamble which resulted in his co-producing the James Bond film series with Albert R.”**

So a day of little significance which was pretty much how George Davison of the Royal Artillery described that Monday in 1915 to his wife in a letter home.

Woolwoch Barracks circa 1914

He had enlisted the year before had spent Christmas and most of 1915 in Ireland before briefly being posted to Woolwich and judging by his comments the army was not quite ready for his arrival.

There were no beds but he had managed to “find two blankets and use my coat and trousers for a pillow – the floor is the only bed and it is abominably draughty.  Our German friends (?) chipped pieces off the barracks the other day and part of the roof is being temporarily held up by wooden joists.”

And time hung heavily “at present we do nothing at all other than parade at 6 o clock am 8 am and 1.45 pm to see if any clothing is available.  There are no knives forks or spoons to eat with so you can imagine the result when fingers have to be used.”

George's letter to Nellie, October 27 1915

His experiences were no doubt echoed by his companions and conditions must have been grim given “that there are 1500 more men than the place will accommodate” which accounted for meal times being “something approaching a football scramble.”

Added to which he was still unable to “send a complete address [because] there are about 1000 other recruits to be dealt with before I get posted to any Battery.”

But there were compensations and George had managed to get the pendant and chain his wife had asked for.

Now on the surface it is an unremarkable letter but of course that is what makes it so important, for here stuck in Woolwich was George Davison biding his time as the army coped with the huge numbers of men who had volunteered since the outbreak of war.

For anyone who knows Woolwich Barracks George’s description of his time there will be of special interest more so because of the reference to Zeppelin raids.

And here I have to own up to a personal connection because just under a year after the letter was written the house two doors down to ours on Well Hall Road was destroyed by a Zeppelin bomb.

History of War, Part XXIV October 27 1915

Nor is that the only link with Mr Davison because for a while he lived here in Chorlton-cum-Hardy just a short walk from our house on Beech Road.

But even if there were not these personal links I have over the last year become close to the man as I work my through the collection of letters he sent home to his wife.

The George Davison Collection is a wonderful insight into how one family coped with the Great War and is a neat contrast to a contemporary account of the war issued by the Manchester Guardian every fortnight.***

And by sheer chance the first volume I have is dated October 27 1915 and covers the Italian Campaign, Russian Domestic Politics and the war on the Western Front with the added bonus of a series of adverts for everything from A Sun Bath to Valkasa the Tonic Nerve Food and the Manchester Guardian Christmas Gifts Fun known as "Tommy's Christmas which was “open again for the supply of Comforts for Lancashire and Cheshire Regiments at the Front.”

I will never know if Mr Davison read the history or if he benefited from “Tommy’s Christmas.”

By November 1915 he was back in Ireland and there he would stay till he was posted to the Western Front.

Pictures; of George Davison his wife Nellie and son, the extract from his letter, postcard of Woolwich Barracks and over of the History of War, courtesy of David Harrop.

*The George Davison collection is a unique record of material held by David Harrop and includes letters postcards, official documents many personal items from when Mr Davison was born in Manchester to his death on the Western Front in June 1918 and continues into the middle of the century. George Davison, http://chorltonhistory.blogspot.co.uk/search/label/George%20Davison

**HISTORYINDATES, http://historyindates.com/27-october-1915/

***The Manchester Guardian History of the War

Woolwich in 1915, a Manchester soldier and a love letter from Chorlton

The Herbert Hospital circa 1900

“Arrived safely today. No settled address at present.  Best wishes George.”

Now at first glance there isn’t anything special about George’s message to his wife Nellie even given that it was sent from Woolwich to 146 Bedford Street, Hulme in Manchester.

Thousands of young men every year leave the family home in search of work and until things are settled will not have a permanent address.

But what makes the card just a little more interesting is the date and time for George sent it on October 25th 1915 just in time for the late evening collection.

From George at Woolwich  to Nellie in Hulme, October 1915

He was in the Royal Artillery and over the course of the next three years was to serve in Ireland and on the Western Front where he was killed in the June of 1918.

I can’t yet establish when he enlisted but Woolwich may have been one of the first posting after he left Manchester.

And just four days after our post card he sent another to Nellie with the request not “to send any letters to Woolwich until further notice.  Expect leaving this weekend for unknown destination.”

During those few days be bought a number of cards depicting Woolwich but never sent them and they now form part of the George Davison collection.

In all there must be a hundred postcards, letters and official documents from 1915 till 1955.  Many are from George to Nellie and after his death there is correspondence from the War Office, the pensions department and his commanding officer.

Woolwich, 1915

There are also his school reports, details of his first job along with the social club he joined and his membership of the Independent Labour Party.

And if that was not enough there is a series of charming letters he wrote to young Nellie before they were married.

The first dates from 1904 when she was just 16 and talks of his recent proposal of marriage and his wish to meet her parents on the following day.

Others follow during the course of the next two years and are the usual love letters sent in the age before the telephone.

But it would be a full four years before they married and another three years before the birth of their son.

This is a wonderful collection of material spanning the last decades of the 19th century and well into the next.

And for me there is a very personal connection which links me to George.

During the years before he was married he lived just a few minute’s walk away at Barway House on Edge Lane here in Chorlton-cum-Hardy, the first marital home was close by in Hulme and we shared a similar political outlook.

Royal Artillery Barracks, Woolwich circa 1900

All of which then just leaves Woolwich.  He was stationed there briefly in 1915 and I grew up close by separated by just forty years which in the great sweep of things is not much.

I suspect that the Woolwich he knew was still the one I was familiar with in the 1960s and which has now pretty much vanished.

I doubt that he would recognise Beresford Square or Wellington Street any more than I can today, and I am sure would be equally hard pressed to make sense of the area around the Arsenal or for that matter the water front.

Odd that two people separated by those four decades should still have more in common than I would have thought.

But then that is sometimes how history pans out, which is less by grand design and more by a series of hiccups.

Location; Woolwich, London


Pictures; from the collection of David Harrop

A tank, a souvenir, and the soldier far from home in Woolwich

Now the romantic in me would like to think that George Davison bought one of these as a souvenir for his wife Nellie and their son Duncan.

The Woolwich Tank, circa 1918

He was in the Royal Artillery and was stationed in Woolwich during the Great War, first in 1915 and then again in 1917, and 1918 while they were living in Manchester.

That said Nellie spent time with him in “digs” in Ireland and Woolwich so it is very possible that she would have come across this piece of crested china, and took it home from London.

Pieces like this were very popular during the Great War and were turned out in their thousands.

The coat of arms of Woolwich

The porcelain companies, seeing the potential of war souvenirs switched from models of Blackpool Tower and Ann Hathaway’s cottage to tanks, battleships and ambulances.

They turned out identical ones, with just the name of a different town or city and coat of arms to distinguish them.

Sometimes in their zeal to market across the country they got it wrong, so while you could have bought an ambulance or tank with Manchester’s coat of arms, you could also have bought a model battleship, despite the fact that there was no such ship in the Royal Navy during the conflict.

The Davison's, 1916

Our Woolwich tank is in perfect condition, and bears the name Shelley China, which was a Staffordshire pottery company founded in 1862, only ceasing as an independent business in 1966.

What I particularly like about this one is that it has been acquired by my old friend David Harrop, who is the also the custodian of the George Davison collection which is a fascinating archive of letters, personal documents and pictures, spanning the period from George’ birth in 1886, through to his war service and into the 1950s.

Mr Davison was killed on the Western Front in June 1918, but his wife continued to add to the collection throughout a big chunk of the century.

And what makes the collection just that bit personal for me, is that he appears in the book I wrote about Manchester and The Great War, but more than that he was at one point in 1918  living just down from our family home on Well Hall Road prior to embarkation for France.*

This I know because we have his will he made out in March 1918, witnessed by a Mr Drinkwater who lived on what is now the old Well Hall cinema.

And in a letter to Nellie he refers to her stay at the house which was just minutes from ours.

Nor does the connection end there, because before he married Nellie, he lived in Chorlton-cum-Hardy just a short walk from where we live now.

And while there, at Barway House on Edge Lane he wrote a series of courting letters to Nellie.

Shelley China

All of which makes the tank and the story very personal.

When David told me he had the tank the message just said “Tank coming home” and while it is not going back to Woolwich it will be joining the George Davison collection, and was  pride of place in a major exhibition to mark the end of the Great War, which was on show at Central Ref from in 2018.

Location; Woolwich, Manchester

Pictures; the Woolwich Tank, circa 1918, George Davison, his wife Nellie and son Duncan, 1916 from the collection of David Harrop

*Manchester Remembering 1914-18, Andrew Simpson, 2017, the History Press, 

https://chorltonhistory.blogspot.com/2018/01/the-great-war-how-we-remember-it.html

Stepping out in the Woolwich foot tunnel in 1916

I can’t say I enjoy using the foot tunnels under the Thames.

There would have been a time when walking under the river using the Woolwich or Greenwich tunnel was an adventure.

But then I was only 10 and like the Underground these days if there is a surface alternative I will take it.

It may mean using a bus on a congested road in the rush hour but I prefer it.

Looking back I am surprised I was so nonchalant at the illuminated sign at Rotherhithe warning of “MEN WORKING ON THE PUMPS” and thinking what that meant for the short journey to Wapping.

And the same unease resurfaced when I read that the refurbishment of both the Woolwich and Greenwich tunnels included work to reduce leakage, improve drainage as well as installing new lifts, CCTV communication facilities and signage.

Of course the tunnels are quite safe but at 67 I shall continue to use the ferry or take the longer route and cross by bridge up river.

That said this 1916 image of the Woolwich foot tunnel from the collection of Kristine Bedford perfectly captures how I remember the place.

The tunnel was “built by Walter Scott and Middleton, opened on 26 October 1912 [and offered] a free 24/7 alternative to the ferry crossing, which was periodically suspended during bad weather.”*

Now whenever I used it I was pretty much on my own and that long walk with the echoing sound of my own feet, the light and the stone pavement stretching out for nearly a third of a mile was always an experience.

Added to which there was that slow incline down and the then the slight rise which indicated that the journey was nearing its end.

Once upon a time just before six in the morning and at the end of the day it would have been a much busier place, particularly when the ferry was not running, but this empty scene is how I remember it and given my disinclination to wander underground it will remain a memory.

Picture; Woolwich Foot Tunnel circa 1916, courtesy of Kristina Bedford

*Woolwich Through Time, Kristina Bedford, 2014, Amberley Publishing,

Stories of the Great War from Eltham and Woolwich ............. nu 4 a fitting memorial

How we chose to remember the Great War was varied.

Some families erected their own memorial plaques in the local church, or parish graveyard subscribed to collective tablet or fashioned their own very personal tribute.

Private Shepherd

The one for young John Edmund Shepherd who died on May 30 1915 aged 19 during the Gallipoli Campaign is made of paper on card and measures 37.5 cms by 24.5 cms.

It carries the flags of the six allied nations either side of an oval insert which contains his picture and has the simple inscription “Duty Called, Duty Done, He Died a Noble Death.”

During 1919 discussions on the form of memorials that should be adopted by the churches led to “a crucifix at the ‘Church in the Square’ for all visitors to the Market to see, a Cross of Sacrifice at Eltham Parish Church, another crucifix at Holy Trinity, Southend Crescent with the Gallipoli Memorial inside the church and at Christ Church, Shooters Hill combined with a cross, that unique milestone.”*

The milestone had originally been erected by the New Cross Turnpike Trust and was adapted to carry a powerful memorial.**

The Shooters Hill Milestone

But for some a more fitting mark of remembrance would be the creation of a new hospital to replace the small cottage hospital which stood close to the Red Lion on Shooters Hill.

It had been opened in 1890 and like the one in Eltham had dome sterling service.

There had been plans for a new hospital in 1912 but these were postponed during the war.  But with the end of the conflict preparations began again and in an age before the NHS much of the cost would be met by subscriptions and fund raising.

In 1920 the Building Committee having visited a number of hospitals accepted plans for a design which would be completed in three stages staring with accommodation for one hundred and twelve beds and admin block and ancilliary buildings.

The ground was broken in February 1923, two years later the foundation stone was laid and in 1927 the hospital was opened under the title,

The Woolwich and District Memorial Hospital with the first patients being received in March 1928.

"In 1948 it joined the NHS as a general hospital.

In 1953 a new Out-Patients Department was opened by Princess Marina, Duchess of Kent, who was Patron of the Hospital.  The X-ray Department was completely refurbished in 1955, with two new X-ray sets installed.

The memorial at Eltham

Although originally dealing with general cases, by 1965 the Hospital began to specialise in surgery.   It had a Casualty Department, but it was felt that its facilities were too limited to deal with the increasing number of road traffic accidents in the area.  
In 1969 the Department closed when the new Accident Centre opened at the nearby Brook General Hospital.  The acute wards were transferred to the Brook General Hospital and St Nicholas' Hospital in Plumstead.

In the 1970s  the Memorial Hospital became a geriatric hospital, with 128 long-stay beds.  A Day Hospital was built in 1975." 

Since at least 2005, it has been run by the Oxleas NHS Foundation Trust and mainly functions as a day centre for the elderly while also offering facilities for psychiatric patients.

Pictures; the Shepherd memorial courtesy of David Harrop, and the Shooters Hill memorial stone and Eltham memorial from the collection of Ryan Ginn

*The Woolwich Story E.F.E. Jefferson, 1968