‘Here Gen. Montgomery stayed and ate before the invasion…..’

Major Ted Applegate

Just recently I have managed to make contact again with the lovely family of Major Ted Applegate. It is always worth trying the internet every now and then when searching for a lost contact 🙂

Grace, one of his daughters, has recently sent another of her Dad’s letters written while based at the American Army hospital during WWII at Kingston Lacy. We got very excited as it was about a visit inside the big mansion. It is wonderful to get first hand accounts of our properties in the past. A fresh eye on the contents and place and we often glean important or interesting information we would never have discovered in the estate archives.

Kingston Lacy

We had gathered from other family members of staff who served at the American hospital that they were allowed up to the house and that the officers had use of some rooms in the house. But we had no real details to confirm the past memories and snippets. I have reproduced the letter below as it speaks for itself….

Ted’s letter home –

Monday 1830, 6 November 1944, England –

Dearest Margie

………………I must tell you! I had the most amazing experience today. Ten of us were invited to go thru Kingston-Lacy estate, the manor house. The agent’s kindness was great and he took us thru himself.

As you enter the large entrance hall – all the beautiful marble with fluted columns – the pieces that take the eye are four enormous deeply and intricately carved teakwood chests about four feet high and eight feet long. They are massively exquisite! Swords, pikes, daggers, shields and armor adorn the walls in profusion. The carving on the chests is Jacobean (?). There are two daintily fine French cabinets. Enormous vases stand here and there. Two steps straight ahead take you to a right angle hallway which leads to marble stairs to the left. Here is a Van Dyke painting of a cavalier – another point of interest is a chair attached to a marble cabinet in which is a balance with bronze weights marked in measurement of stone (7 lbs). You sit in the leather chair and weigh yourself. It is 17th century. As you walk up the marble stairway toward a one piece window which much be 6 x 10 feet you are struck by the enormous bronze figures lying on the stairwell ledgers looking down. They are the works of Michael Angelo! The stair makes one (180 degrees) turning and on the walls are two enormous paintings of dogs attacking a bull. They were painted for one of the Kings of France! They were a gift to the owner years ago – or the master as they speak of him.

Now we go into the library. The room is enormous and above the book lined walls are life sized paintings of the ancestors running back to 1700! Some of the books, most of them in fact, are old enormous works of art, some printed by hand! Desks, chairs, footstools are all most interesting, all very old and in excellent shape. I could have spent months there with pleasure.

Adjoining is the saloon. I can’t begin to tell you of half the marvels here. Enamel portraits of many people of the times – most, most beautiful China figurines and some unbelievably delicate. Lace over the hair, around the collars and sleeves which I felt sure must be lace until I looked at it with a magnifying glass. There were some pieces exactly similar to what you have on the way. Two Van Dykes were here.

Now into the drawing room. Twice as big – really an enormous room. (All the ceilings are beautifully painted with figures) the overhanging border near the ceiling looks as though the room as been prepared for indirect lighting. Gold leaf adorns it! Here is an enormous painting by Sir Joshua Reynolds and another by Rembrandt! Many others whose names are not familiar to me, several Dutch names. An ebony and ivory cabinet heavily inlaid with mother of pearl! It is most delicate. A book of signatures bears many King’s names, the Duke of Windsor’s, German Emperor, or Duke of Wellington, etc. etc. I can’t remember everything – museum pieces were in the greatest profusion. Every door everywhere was carved deeply and signed by – Gobelin (?) I’m not sure of the name but he should be famous.

Now into the small or private dining room. The walls are oak covered with the original leather all over. It is dark and cracked. The ceiling is most beautifully carved and covered with gold leaf! Here Gen. Montgomery stayed and ate before the invasion for two weeks with his staff! This room has many pieces about the room from Spain. It is called the Spanish Room.

Now the State dining room. It must be 40 feet square. An enormous massive circular mahogany table in the center would seat a regiment. The walls are oak paneled and the doors are two inches thick plus the carvings which are 3 or more inches bas-relief. Tapestries long on each wall and the most colorful and beautiful I ever saw.

From here we went upstairs again to the bedrooms. About 10 of these have little dressing or sitting rooms adjoining & also a bathroom – but there are no fixtures or tub or anything. The bath was made ready by the servants. All beds are four posters (10 feet). Prints and bric-a-brac of all periods adorn everywhere. Now upstairs again to the nursery and servants quarters. The corner bedrooms are adorned to make them appear as tents. Cords (wood carved) run down the seams from the top from head height they taper to a point. At the head of these top stairs is a low gate (carved, of course) to prevent the youngsters falling downstairs – the servants’ quarters are as nice as ours at home. From here we went onto the roof. The roof is solid sheet lead! The chimneys (4) are enormous and each has 8 big lead rectangular outlets, all of lead. The agent said each weighed 300 lbs.

Now to catch up a few points – a picture in the drawing room – glass encased is worth 1/4 million ($1,000,000). I didn’t hear the name of the author or painter it is Madonna with two children.

The chandeliers (4) deserve a word. Cut glass, very intricate and enormous. Each was alike in drawing room, salon and two dining rooms. They must be 8 ft high and four across. They held I guess 100 candles. How they sparkled.

Now down to the 1st basement where is the room which we would call the den where the gentlemen retired after dinner for their smoking. Paneled walls of Belgian oak, racy and racing prints and prints of beautiful horses, many hunting scenes and such – a wheeled server for liquor and wines and such was beautiful with recessed and carved receptacles for glasses and decanters, all filled with proper glasses. Then across the low ceilinged wide hall to the billiard room with a full sized (not our size) table similarly decorated. The present master has a bed here where he sleeps when he comes here. His sister sleeps in the smoking room.

Now to the kitchen. The original tables and benches and ovens are here! It is enormous, the tops of the tables are 2 inches thick and sturdy as stone. The floor is flagged with large stones. The ovens are built in the wall (new electric stoves stand beside them).

The two obelisks I spoke of previously were brought from Egypt and the cornerstone was laid by the Duke of Wellington, Napoleon’s nemesis.

Some of the doors took 3 years – for their carving – and they look it.

A total of 56,000 acres append the estate. They are taxed all but 6 pence out of each pound of revenue – the gov’t gets $3.90 out of $4.00!

I don’t want to bore you but I wanted to tell you about this. It is all so very interesting to me & I wish you could see it. You would love it. I’d never get you away.

In the library are all the old keys to Corfe Castle, some as long and heavy as my forearm. Many other old relics of Corfe are in the second basement beneath the first but he said he couldn’t take us there. There are 27 bedrooms not counting the servants’ quarters

Here I have done all this writing and no work done so I will have to get busy, my love. If you don’t mind, Mother would probably enjoy reading about these things. I am getting writer’s cramp & can’t make my pen behave – I have been hurrying to get to my work.

How about sending me a couple of pairs of cheap cotton gloves to protect my hands from this coke & coal I have to handle? Did you say you had sent me some nuts? West is going to London next week and will take my film to be developed, then I’ll send it to you.

I love you my dearest, but I wonder if you have read this far. Goodnight and kiss my girls for me – I kiss you in spirit my love – and in person. Again someday I hope – soon.

Always your faithful – servant! and husband,

Ted

Thank you once again Grace and family for treating us to such a wonderful insight in to life during the war on an English country estate.

 

 

Giving memories a voice

We can write down our memories for future generations to read, but we can also hear the past through sound recordings and videos.

Today Alex is visiting from The Coastal and Intertidal Zone Archaeological Network (CITiZAN http://www.citizan.org.uk), an organization set up in response to dynamic threats to our island coastal heritage. It is a community archaeology project and actively promotes site recording and long-term monitoring programmes led by volunteers.

Alex will be soon leading a walk at Studland on the Dorset coast, looking at the WWII sites, and as well as research for the tour she hopes to play snippets from our sound archive of local people talking about what it was like, what they saw and stories of life in Studland during WWII.

Studland played an important part in WWII as a testing area for amphibius tanks and  fougasse (burning sea). In April 1944 Prime Minister Winston Churchill, King George VI and General Dwight D. Eisenhower (Supreme Commander of the Allied Forces and in charge of the military operation) met at Fort Henry on Redend Point at Studland to watch the combined power of the Allied Forces preparing for D-Day.

Alex listening to the taped memories and working on her tour notes

 

The copies of the small sound archive we hold at the office are all still on original cassette tapes. For younger readers there is a picture below of what one is!

A cassette tape

 

 

Alex has had to come and use our old technology to be able to then record a digitized copy for use in the field. We will need to digitize our archive so the recordings are more accessible. Luckily we have a cassette transcribing machine and a cassette player. The transcriber has extra controls so you can slow the tape down, change the tone and various backspace and counter options. It even has a foot pedal control!

Transcribing machine –  a special purpose machine which is used for voice recording processing, so the recording can be  written in hard copy form.

The Transcribing machine

 

 

One day these machines will become part of the archaeological archives. At the moment they are thankfully still available and needed to play the memories from the past.

All about Eve: Chedworth, the Mithraeum and 1954

I found these letters a couple of weeks ago in brown paper envelopes hidden within the archive of the Oxford professor and Roman era specialist Sir Ian Richmond. The Richmond archive is in the Sackler Library, Oxford.

The letters are from Eve Rutter who was engaged by the National Trust on advice from the Ashmolean Museum to begin excavations at Chedworth Roman Villa after a research gap of 20 years. Her work was good but she was rather brushed aside by Sir Ian …who took over and carried on working at Chedworth for another 10 years .

The newly qualified graduate Eve Rutter began modern excavation at Chedworth 60 years ago.. spending the late summer of 1954 at the villa before starting her new job at the Guildhall Museum London working with a team to record the archaeology of WWII bomb damaged London as it was being redeveloped.

I give you the story in the letters copied below

27th July 1954 Oxford

Dear Mr Irvine (National Trust Custodian Chedworth Roman Villa)

This is about the proposed excavation at Chedworth..I am unable to do it myself at that time of year so we have the services of Miss Eve Rutter who has just taken her final exams here and has already been on many excavations including one she has directed herself so I think she will do it very well. Would you and Mrs Irvine be able to put Miss Rutter up during the excavation as she has no means of transport….

Best wishes Yours sincerely Mr D. Harden Keeper Ashmolean.

Plan of Chedworth before Eve Rutter’s excavation. The ‘Porter’s Lodge is the small room (IX) bottom left on the plan protruding south of the south range.

13th August 1954 Long Crichel House, Wimborne Minster, Dorset

Dear Miss Kirk (Joan Kirk Assistant Keeper Ashmolean Museum, Oxford)

After getting your letter, I had a chat with Irvine who thinks that two men for a week might be enough..After having Lord Vestey’s men for a week after harvest we may have to pay for additional help… I hope you feel you can go ahead. Of course if the dig reveals some wonderful finds you may be tempted to go slow and then the labour problem will grow more serious…

Yours sincerely Eardley Knollys National Trust Regional Representative.

28th September 1954 Chedworth

Dear Mr Harden

Herewith the plan of the excavation at Chedworth: any suggestion as to what the well drained room is will be welcome….

Plan and sections drawn by Eve Rutter of the 1954 excavation

Could this have been a scullery – old farms do have similar drains in their sculleries although not such a complicated trip up pattern!

I hope you have found all the things returned alright. Mr Ovenall was on duty when I came in on the Sunday. I don’t know whether Joan has returned: I thought she said she would be away a week but the Museum said two?

The glass fragments, mainly from one vessel I think, although few seem to fit, came from the first trench and were associated with a Rhenish thumb indented jar. Is any result yet available on the bracelet?

..the NT has asked for a report and plan to be available for the annual general meeting on 12 Oct to liven up the members and if I could have a photograph or two to include, the dig might look a little better – the Mithraeum is setting a high standard of what the public expect!

I go to the Guildhall on Friday. The Mithraeum is very interesting although I can’t help feeling that many of the thousands must have been disappointed at the rather wet stonework. Life there is very hectic consisting chiefly in an attempt to avoid too many press reporters all seeking to see the latest head!

Please send the photographs to the Guildhall as time is running rather short.

With best wishes, yours sincerely Eve

9th October 1954 Ibthorpe, Hurstbourne Tarrant

Dear Joan

Thank you so much for your letter and help over the Chedworth stuff. I enclose what I hope will be an adequate report for the NT…

I am enjoying life at the Guildhall very much indeed although it is extremely hectic there at the moment. The other morning we were crowded out by the press (a usual event in the past Mithraeum statue-a-day week).. The statuary is absolutely fantastic – Miss Toynbee says that the Serapis head is as good, if not better than anything in the Rome museums…

Best wishes to all Eve

October 1954

The aim of the short excavation was to discover if the mound to the south of the south wing had been disturbed since Roman times, and if not, whether it merited further investigation and, incidentally, whether the present reconstruction walls of the south wing are correctly aligned….
Eve Rutter

18th October 1954, Queen Anne’s Gate, London

Dear Miss Kirk Joan Kirk, Dept of Antiquities, Ashmolean Museum, Oxford

I was delighted to get Miss Rutter’s fascinating report on the excavations. I should like you to know how how grateful the Trust is to the Museum for undertaking this work on our behalf…

As regards the possibility of further excavation next year, I am asking Mr R. Stewart-Jones our representative for Gloucestershire to get in touch with you…

Yours sincerely R. Romilly Fedden

18th October 1954, Warwick Road, Earls Court, London

Dear Joan

..I sent the Chedworth photographs per express and hope they will arrive in time. I enclose the bill for the film and some drawing paper…

I am interested in Richard’s “C.I.D.” investigations on the bracelet. It was not close by the coffin, at least not close enough to be part of the burial I shouldn’t think. Anyway the details I could gather from Mr Irvine about the burial suggested that anything worn by the child when inside it could not have slipped outside the coffin stones, or if it had only just down the side. There were no human bones otherwise associated with it. Anyway I shall be glad to hear Richard’s final verdict. Gold sounds exciting, quite beyond one’s wilder dreams: I only hope this doesn’t mean that I shall be pursued by coroners seeking to prove that the owner is still alive and presently returning to recover his lost possessions!
Life at the Guildhall has become less hectic this week. Mr Cook and Mr Merrifield are very kind and have made me feel very welcome. Mr Cook seems a little worried that I shall expect every excavation to produce marble heads!

…In the afternoon I went down to the site and the temple has produced a very nice door step..The “reconstruction”, if one can call the pile of Roman used debris so, is a pathetic affair and the way they are carving the original up with electric drills is tragic.

How is Oxford? it seems odd not to be pottering about it. Look after yourself and don’t catch any more peculiar diseases ‘cos I shan’t come out to the Slade this year Love Eve

6th November 1954 Warwick Road, Earls Court, London

Dear Joan

Re the Chedworth stuff Mr Irvine asked if it were possible to have a short report for the Museum. Secondly, were two coins amongst the stuff I brought back? Mr Ovenall said he would have them sent to Dr Sutherland. Only one is from the site, the other was given to Mr Irvine by a local forester for identification.

John Harris tells me that the “graffiti” “samian” looks suspicious. I haven’t looked at it myself apart from giving it a hasty clean. It should be alright according to the level it came from. Has Dr Harden had a chance to look at it yet? I should be interested to know the date as it was found in connection with the Rhenish ware which is the only apparently early pottery amongst fourth century pie dishes etc..

Hope to see you fairly soon. Give my regards to Roper and Miss Carter Yours Eve

5th March 1955 The Roman Inscriptions of Britain

Dear Miss Kirk

Thank you for sending me the Chedworth graffito for examination.
I read the graffito as ABCDEFGHI[… It is not clear whether further letters were cut or whether the space after I marks the termination of the original text. The letter forms are of Roman type and unlike modern falsifications. This graffito may have been cut when the bowl was intact or on this sherd after the fracture of the bowl.
If space allows, I should like to include this in my next JRS report.
Yours sincerely R.P.Wright

8th March 1955 Ashmolean Museum, Oxford

Dear Eve

I am enclosing a copy of Mr Wright’s letter about the Chedworth sherd with the alphabet on it, from which you will see that it is perfectly good Roman graffito. If you felt like it you might drop him a line to say that you would be glad for him to publish it in J.R.S.

Yours ever Joan

25th June 1956 Guildhall Museum, Royal Exchange, London

Dear Dr Harden

Thank you very much for your letter which greeted my return home. France in many ways was maddening…

As regards to Chedworth, I am interested to continue the excavation of the Porter’s Lodge area to see whether there is a definite clue as to what it is..

I don’t like to ask Mr Cook to “wangle” me the extra time off which Chedworth would probably involve. However, if it is a case of now or never with the National Trust I could ask him about the possibility..

I have wondered whether anything should be due in the way of an interim report..should the local archaeological society at least have a note of what was found in their reports…

I hope you enjoy the conference and have good weather Best wishes Yours sincerely Eve

Transactions of the Bristol and Gloucestershire Archaeological Society Vol 78 1959

the so-called Porter’s Lodge (Room 2) which was proved by excavations conducted by Miss Eve Rutter, now Mrs Harris, to have had a very different purpose. It proved to have been twice reconstructed, serving as a latrine in the first and second existence, but deprived of the sanitary fittings in the final stage. Sir Ian Richmond

Guildhall Museum Reports..Coleman St. E. Rutter 1956; Lombard St E. Rutter 1957; Clarence Place E.Rutter 1958; Midland Bank Gresham St 1959 E. Harris & and P. Mardsen; Oldgate Hill E. Harris 1960.

19th December 2014

Dear Martin

The Museum of London has forwarded your enquiry to me. I worked with Eve Rutter in the 1950s employed to record the archaeology while the old WWII bomb sites were being developed within the City. She married a John Harris and left the Guildhall Museum in the early 1960s. He was a specialist in the cult of Mithras I think.

Sorry not to be of more help.

With best wishes

Peter
……

Eve Harris and John R. Harris, 1965, The Oriental Cults in Roman Britain.

……

Eve arrived during great excitement: the extent of Londinium’s temple of Mithras was beginning to be revealed together with its exotic statues and carvings (see British Archaeology no 140, Jan-Feb 2015). The discovery caused great excitement in the press, thousands queued to visit the site. The P.M., Winston Churchill stepped in to give the archaeologists more time.. but the temple was eventually broken up and re-erected by the building developers.. the structure blocked their construction site.

Museum of London is involved in a new project to rebuild it in a far more authentic way in the next few years using the information collected by the London archaeologists back in 1954.

Through Mithras, Eve met her husband and together they published a definitive work on eastern religions in Roman Britain.

I wonder where her archaeological career took her after that…

It would be good to speak to her about her memories of Chedworth all those years ago.

The Brent Knoll Crosses

View of Brent Knoll from the west on the way back from Brean Down on the coast.

Brent Knoll like Burrow Mump and Glastonbury Tor is a landmark rising out of the Somerset Levels. Beyond it to the west lies the flat land towards Brean Down and the sea.

The National Trust acquired the hilltop in 1979 and the way up is along footpaths from either the churches of East Brent or South Brent. Brent Knoll and the surrounding land was owned by Glastonbury Abbey from Saxon times.

This is such a prominent place that there has long been a tradition that three wooden crosses should be erected on the east rampart to celebrate Easter.

The old cross foundations had deteriorated and the local community applied to English Heritage and the National Trust to relocate the cross foundations in a better, more visible location. This was agreed and so I was asked to supervise the excavation.

View from the east rampart of Brent Knoll towards Crook Peak on the Mendip Hills (also NT).

We jumped into Ian’s landrover and he drove me and Laura to the top of the Knoll. A perfect day. We stepped out onto the rampart and the views were spectacular. We each took a spade and dug the holes at the marked locations.

The excavation for the three cross post-holes

Strange for just the three of us to be spaced along this exposed earthwork digging the holes for crosses just before Easter. Then I found a fragment of Black Burnished ware bead rim bowl within my post-hole. 2000 years old..contemporary with the crucifixion of the person who changed the world.

At that time, this Iron Age hillfort was probably still occupied…just a few years before the Roman Conquest. Perhaps the first christian arrived with the legions.

My post-hole where I found the fragment of bead-rim bowl.

200 years before my visit, the Rev Skinner a renowned Somerset antiquarian and also curate of South Brent church had walked up to the top and wrote this in his diary on July 20th 1812
“after breakfast we took a pick-axe and shovel and climbed the Knoll in order to dig within the entrenchment; in the course of a few minutes Mr Phelps and his brother, my companions, collected a good many pieces of the coarse Roman pottery…I understand that a good many coins have been found here…The ground at present is very unequal within the vallum having been turned up by the quarrymen, who without doubt removed the foundations of the buildings and walls”

The quarried interior of the hillfort. There are only a few islands of stratified archaeology left.

Within the hillfort, much of the archaeology has been removed in the past because of the extent of the quarrying Rev Skinner described. Quite an ornate late Roman building once stood here. Perhaps a temple. Many Somerset hillforts were re-occupied after the Romans left in the 5th century and there may be evidence for this fortification to hold back the Saxon advance.

We walked around the edge of the hillfort and found the slit trenches dug by Brent’s home guard during WWII. Then we took one last panoramic scan of the beautiful Somerset countryside and bumped down the hill in the landrover.

The storm has passed…..

At last, after three months, we have high pressure over us in Dorset, gone are the storms, and in the sky a shiny, glowing, warm object.  Time to check our site at Hive Beach to see if it still exists! 

Hive Beach cafe in the background and in the foreground our site

As I drove down the road I saw the welcome site of the cafe and the NT information hut, the car park and the wall next to the sea. Passed the wall could be a different sight, I parked and headed for the low cliff were our excavated building was. There was definite evidence of waves  having broken over the cliff and in people from the cafe told me the waves had come right up to their veranda.

Looking East before the storms

Looking East after the storms

The change in the profile of the cliff was very obvious and parts of the building were on the beach. I walked along the top and checked a scar at the side of the site, I noticed some shattered pebble flint. As I moved to get a better look and a photo I slipped down the scar and ended up on the beach! Oh well at least I could now see the remains of the building better, and the sticky clay all over me would soon dry!

Looking at the back wall of the building from the beach before the storm

Looking at the back wall of the building from the beach after the storm

Although we have lost parts of the floor and plaster from the walls the site has acted like a erosion barrier, with the cliff either side eroding much more. The most obvious change is the now straight section through the beach and ground the house was built on, we can see the stratigraphy, the different types of sand deposits and also how shallow the foundations are.

The storm cleaned section

Further along to the east of the building, a section of  wire and metal fence stakes had been uncovered by the storms, they must be part of the WWII defences erected over 70 years ago. 

the metal stakes and wire fence uncovered by the storms at Hive Beach

Like many others over the past hundred years I took  photograph looking West to record this moment in time, so in years to come we can compare the cliff line after many more stormy seas  have swept in undermining the cliffs and devouring the land and buildings in its way.

The cliffs have suffered more falls of rock over the last few months (or site is in the lower right)

Hive Beach view from the past looking west

Brean Down: Reindeer to Battery

Brean Down is a ridge of rock that sticks out into the sea on the south side of Weston Super Mare. Nearly all of it is a scheduled monument and rightly so, this is definitely an A* site for archaeology.

Brean Down looking NW a carboniferous limestone ridge on the south side of the Bristol Channel entrance.

Approaching it from the south across the Somerset Levels..through the caravan parks. The carboniferous limestone cliff looms up. A giant wind-break..the silts and sands are stopped by Brean and thousands of years worth of evidence of people’s lives has been buried by its slow accumulation.

At the bottom are reindeer bones.., some were remains of meals left by communities of hunters about 12,000 years ago.

The sand cliff from the beach looking east. The deposits have built up against the limestone cliff over thousands of years. The wind sweeps off the levels from the south and has buried archaeology from the remains of hunted reindeer 14,000 years old at the bottom to a Dark Age cemetery of AD 5th-6th century near the top.

Higher up have been found Neolithic flint tools covered by Bronze Age salt-working remains and near the top a Dark Age Christian cemetery below a Tudor rabbit farmer’s cottage. It’s virtually a… you name it we’ve got it ..sort of place and there is much more to be discovered.

Along the crest of the Down are visible earthworks,’celtic’ fields (remains of the Bronze Age to Romano-British farming), these small enclosures are intermingled with Bronze Age burial mounds, an Iron Age fort and a 4th century Roman temple.

The top of the Down looking east towards the Somerset coast. There are the remains of prehistoric fields and Bronze Age burial mounds here as well as an Iron Age hillfort and Romano-Celtic temple.

Other mounds have possibilities. Nick, who carried out the National Trust survey for Brean a few years ago wonders whether one mound facing the Bristol Channel might be a Roman light house or signal post which once guided trading vessels towards the mouth of the River Axe. He and Mark will test this theory in May with a couple of small trenches. Their geophysics has provided some encouraging results.

The Down is well worth a visit. Park in Brean Cafe’ car park beside the beach and take the long climb up the steps over the Brean sand deposits until the summit is reached. There are great views across the levels to the south or across Weston Bay and the Bristol Channel to the north. Follow the undulating spine of the ridge until you start to descend at the west end and there in front of you are the remains of a military base.

The first concrete bunker you come to was the command centre. It is a shell now but there is a WWII photo that shows the soldiers here with range finders, radios and charts on the walls. From here looking down to the left perched on the cliff is one concrete searchlight building, the other lies at the western tip of Brean.

Plan of the Palmerstonian fort gun emplacements before they were covered by new gun positions in WWII.

The main thing to look at here is the fort built to guard against potential attack by Napoleon III’s French troops. By the time it was ready in 1872 and the gunners were stationed there, the French had largely been defeated by Germany and the string of forts ordered by the Prime Minister along the south coast became known as ‘Palmerston’s Follies’

The barrack block built for 20 men only had about 4 or 5 men living there according to the census returns of 1881 and 1891. The officer’s house was lived in by the Master Gunner along with his wife and 6 children aged 1-11 years old. His army career had taken him to various parts of the Empire as his children had each been born in exotic foreign places.

In 1900, Gunner Haynes decided to fire a shot into the Gun Battery’s magazine and blew himself and part of the military base into bits. By 1913, the old Brean Battery had been turned into a Cafe’ and day-trippers came to use the old military base as a recreation area which had a swing and a see-saw. People went down into the munitions stores and signed their names on the walls. Brean NT volunteers have photographed and transcribed them and written a report. The cafe’ was in use throughout WWI but it closed down in 1936.

Brean Down Fort was a cafe’ from 1913-1936 and graffiti in the underground Victorian ammunition stores shows many visitors there during WWI.

WWII and the base was re-occupied. A series of bases for Nissan huts can be seen on the north side of the Battery and two new gun emplacements were built over the old Victorian gun sites. The Bristol Channel was a strategic position and needed to be guarded.

Towards the end of the war, as the invasion threat receded, the boffins moved in. Known locally as the ‘wheezers and dodgers’ they were based in Weston in the old Victorian Birkbeck pier and used the Down and beach beside it to test rockets and other devices, particularly in advance of the D-Day landings of 1944.

Beyond the gun battery is the rocky headland with the view towards the islands of Flat Holm and Steep Holm in the Channel. A WWII searchlight building can be seen. Part of its roof has been flipped back by a violent storm. To the right are the rails for an experimental rocket launcher created by the ‘wheezer and dodger’ boffins based in a requisitioned pier in Weston-Super-Mare.

At the end of Brean, beyond the Battery survives a pair of rails used as a rocket launching device.

Take a trip and go and look. Brean is stunning for nature conservation too but this is an archaeology blog after all so I won’t mention the Peregrines and the rock roses…oh I just did.

News from the hospital

The garden steps in front of Kingston Lacy mansion

Having just been to hospital having turned my ankle (just a sprain) I thought it was time for a little bit more from the  WWII American Army hospital at Kingston Lacy. We get a great insight into life at the hospital through the letters and photographs we have in the archive, lots of details about the hospital site, staff and patients. From the archive we are even able to get an idea of what they did when on leave or had a day off, including visiting the wider estate and local sights.

At Corfe Castle, in the upper ward the Gloriette in the background

We have a few photographs taken at  Corfe Castle an early  medieval castle, and part of the Bankes estate since 1635. Most of the pictures feature the Officers but in one there is a large  group  including nurses as well.

the exit from the Keep, the main tower of the castle

We were never sure how much access to the house and gardens they had but from the photographs and memories we now know they used part of the house for the Officers and could also visit the gardens, right next to the house.

Corfe Castle main gate

               In the collection of photographs we have received from various families of staff who worked at the hospital we know they visited Southampton, London and even Scotland, this may have been after the war finished and before they went back to America.  

American ships docked in Southampton

Westminster Bridge front of the Houses of Parliament

The Forth bridge across the Firth of Forth

Bodies in Trenches 2013

A good time to review some of the discoveries of the past year. Much of what we have written here is to do with work that National Trust archaeologists have carried out themselves. However, resources dictate that I usually need to a ask archaeological contractors to carry out recording work.

A typical watching brief situation. This time for a new water pipe at Ebworth, Gloucestershire dug in September this year.

Here are some of the discoveries from repairs, developments and service trenches that needed excavating this year. At some places, a trench can be dug where there is a near certainty that archaeology will be affected…even when the location has been chosen to avoid it. At others, we do not have enough information to know what will be discovered. Geophysics can help… but often it is difficult to know what lies beneath the ground.

Montacute, Somerset built c.1600. There are lost garden features and earlier settlement evidence here. Particularly an ornate gatehouse which is supposed to lie between the pavilion buildings shown on this picture.

In January, trenching for a new drainage system and fibre-optic cable line around the house at Montacute, Somerset was watched by Mike and Peter of Terrain Archaeology but nothing much came up there despite the the archaeological potential of the place. Beyond history there is only archaeology to help us understand. A similar trench at Tyntesfield recorded by Jim of Talits (The Answer Lies In The Soil) found the footings of the original entrance lodge for the mansion complete with its fireplace and flagstone floor. Sam of Absolute Archaeology watched a cable trench for the new IT system in Kingston Lacy Park and this revealed a concentration of flint tools evidence for a Neolithic and Bronze Age occupation site here over 4000 years ago.

Bottle Knap cottage, Long Bredy, Dorset. A new service trench came across 2 burials recorded by Peter and Mike of Terrain Archaeology.

In May, bodies were found. Bottleknap Cottage in Long Bredy, west Dorset is the only piece of National Trust land in the Bride Valley. Peter and Mike were asked to watch while a new drain and soakaway were dug there. At about a metre deep, the digger bucket brought up bones beneath a pile of rubble. Remains of two human skeletons had been discovered in a completely unexpected place… several hundred metres from the parish church. Probably pre-Christian but there was no previous evidence for an ancient settlement site here.. so we will have to wait for the radiocarbon date to find out how old they are.

The parish church at Long Bredy. The Bottleknap burials were found a few hundred metres from the church yard. The hollow-way to the right leads up to the chalk downland where the South Dorset Ridgeway Bronze Age round barrow cemetery can be found. Perhaps the Bottleknap bodies are pre-Christian like those beneath the burial mounds.

In the summer… and now into their stride, Mike and Peter watched a drainage trench at Thomas Hardy’s house at Max Gate. Although late Victorian, Max Gate sits on a large Middle Neolithic enclosure.. it dates to about 3000 BC (like the earthwork around Stonehenge). Hardy found Iron Age and Roman burials here when his house and garden were created, so a new excavation was bound to hit something ..wherever it was located. The trench was dug carefully.. by hand but sure enough it uncovered the top of a Roman burial. The skeleton was covered and the pipe placed above it and whoever it was.. was left it in peace.

Thomas Hardy’s House at Max Gate, Dorchester is built on a Middle Neolithic enclosure like the one surrounding Stonehenge, the stone in the foreground comes from the site. Thomas Hardy found Iron Age and Roman burials here and Peter and Mike found another this year.

Bob of Forum Heritage has been recording historic buildings for us.. the paper mill at Silverton, Killerton Estate in Devon and the Almshouses in Sherborne village, Gloucestershire. He is currently making a record of Hyde Farm in Dorset while it is being refurbished. The walls have subsided over the last 200 years. The reason being that they are sinking into the pits and foundation trenches of an Iron Age settlement.

Jon of AC Archaeology did some archaeological recording while the Knightshayes cricket pavilion, Devon was being built. We thought that settlement remains from the nearby Roman fort might be found but the evidence was limited to the footings for a guardhouse used by the Americans during WWII.

These are all small important fragments, pieces from jigsaws of the past. Trenches are windows. Archaeological layers can only be broken up once. An experienced eye is needed, someone to write the story of what they see.

I wonder what 2014 will bring. On Monday I go to Lacock to discuss the route of a new sewage pipe for the Abbey.The new trench will have to negotiate a lot of buried archaeology.. as we found out when the old one was repaired in 96.

A new sewage treatment plant was needed at Lacock, Wiltshire. The site of the medieval monastic infirmary lies in this area and so AC Archaeology excavated it in 1996. Further work is needed this year.

Into the West: Cornwall

Cornwall is a foreign country, they do things differently there.

A Neolithic dolmen above New Town in west Cornwall with the familiar outline of a 19th century tin mine engine house behind.

As a soft easterner and Wessex archaeologist now united with Devon and Cornwall, it was time to travel to the uttermost west and find out something about it. This is based on two days last week looking with a stranger’s archaeological eyes on a new world.

The view from Cotehele, of the dovecote and the woodland garden that leads down to the River Tamar.

When I started with the National Trust, I asked Tony, the old experienced curator, “which is your favorite property?” “Cotehele!” he said without blinking an eye and so it went on my list of places to visit.

We eventually got there, wound our way round Plymouth, crossed the Tamar and threaded our way along narrow roads. A medieval fortified manor house revamped in the Tudor period. A beautiful setting above the border river between Devon and Cornwall.

Cotehele medieval manor house. Cotehele river front lies below the steep slope of the wooded gardens to the right.

My 1977 guide book (which I dusted down.. found on the shelves of my home office Eastleigh Court… amongst others that had washed up there over the decades) summed up medieval Cotehele “in the south-west peninsula the landed classes still lived lives of semi-barbarity”. Not very PC but I guess stuff took time to get there. The Romans didn’t leave much of an impact and the Anglo-Saxons barely registered.

The place-names are different…very celtic.

Apparently there was a feud between the Cotehele Edgecombes and the Willoughby’s of Bere Ferrers across the river and his henchmen attacked Cotehele and in 1483 Richard Edgcumbe escaped his pursuers by putting a stone in his cap and throwing it in the river. Seeing the cap sinking they rode on thinking he had desperately drowned himself rather than be captured.

So Cornwall was a bit wild west but also very industrial. The mining industry here has World Heritage Site status. The craggy rocks are full of precious things. Cotehele had copper and arsenic mines and down at the water front beside the Tamar, we found mills and kilns where rock was burnt to create lime used for mortar and improve the quality of the local acid soils.

Map of Cornwall and the Godolphin Estate

We headed further west to Godolphin. The family here made their money out of tin mining and the medieval house was upgraded in the 17th but there are many different phases to the house. One wing stops short as though the money ran out and the grand design was never completed. The guides in the King’s Hall told us about the house and the Godolphin family…there was so much more to be discovered. The Trust have not owned the house for long.

The various phases of Godolphin House. The Neo-classical house is unfinished,

Cornwall is famous for its wild coasts so we went to Godrevy near Redruth. Here, excavations had found an Iron Age and Romano-British farmstead beneath the remains of the small medieval manor. No villas here though. The odd sherd of samian pottery but the native ’rounds’ continued into the Roman period.

Godrevy, a disused stone-edged field boundary bank eroded by a footpath and cut away at the cliff edge.

The field systems retain elements of their prehistoric form, small and irregular earth banks faced with stone. We found one eroded and cut by the sea cliff. This is a land of Neolithic dolmens and subterranean Iron Age fogous. I have much to learn. Even the WWII pill boxes were of igneous rock rather than my familiar brick and concrete.

Stone WWII pillbox guarding Godrevy beach.

I got back on the A30, drove across Bodmin and Dartmoor to reach the rolling chalklands of home.

Hospital visiting time again

The hospital sign at Kingston Lacy

I promised more about the 106th American hospital that was based at Kingston Lacy, near Wimborne in Dorset, so here we go with the tale of a Adrian D Mandel, Bacteriologist.

Adrian’s son John kindly scanned all the photographs he found including what his Dad had written on the back. I  have made a small selection from the large collection and  start  his journey at Fort McClellan, then  a few from his time at Kingston Lacy and finish with John visiting last year the places his Dad had been.

Fort McClellan all ready to go

June 18th 1944 – ‘Fort McClellan a few hours before leaving, the mens packs are all lined up ready to be slung on the racks. Today is the day we shall soon be off to lord knows where.’

accommodation block at Kingston Lacy

April 1945 – Kingston lacy  ‘my home in the E.T.O, shared with 15 other men. Triangular affair on the right is our gas attack alarm. The building in the shadows on the right is the latrine or ablutions as the English say. Again note the trees, truly we are in one of the nicest locations in England’

Wimborne in Dorset

April 1945 – Wimborne  ‘people lined up (que up) for ice-cream on one of the first days it was sold after 6 years of war. This so-called ice-cream tastes nothing like American ice-cream – probably due to the war.’

Inside one of the hospital buildings at Kingston Lacy

January 1945 –  ‘Mandel and Meites and a late night ‘smorgasboard’ after a usual poor supper. Tea, orange juice, cheese, crackers, sugar, sausage, I think Joe is hiding a salami in this picture. Note our  Coleman photo-electric spectrophotometer in the background’

Pamphill Green, Pamphill Manor on the left

May 1945 – ‘one of our field days, baseball game between officers and nurses. Nurse Lt Ventre at bat, Capt. Mac Farland mess officer catching, Spectators starting on the left Capt. Wroblewaki, Lt Col Cobb Chief of Surgery,  my buddy Meites and then McNamara the catholic chaplain. The house on the left is where the land army girls were’

The clowns were part of the field day events.

May 1945 – ‘English children intently watching our two clowns (part of field day) Lt Mc Clellan and Lt Woodin making fun with a deck of cards. Those kids really had the time of their lives that day, including the best meal in 5 years’

Studious scene inside one of the hospital buildings at Kingston Lacy

 October 1944 – ‘T/G Flaherty hard at work reading the ‘Stars and Stripes’ “well fellows according to todays paper we should be home by — followed by uncomplimentary sounds from the rest of the men in the hut’

The 10 bed isolation ward building

John at Kingston Lacy in the doorway of one of only three surviving structures left in the grounds of the house. This is a 10 bed isolation ward, now an archive store.

St Stephens Church on the estate April 1945

John Mandel at St Stephens Church Sept 2012

I must thank  the families of the guys and girls who were based at Kingston Lacy for the information they give us it is amazing, a field of cows and sheep suddenly becomes filled with people going about their daily lives among the trees.