And another random post….
The branding from easyGroup is nearly always quite vibrant and they haven’t held back at their London offices in Kensington. I like that their branding is so recognisable, quite an achievement. As an irrelevant aside, I try and avoid anything from easyGroup since they started getting involved with practices such as those mentioned at https://www.pinsentmasons.com/out-law/news/hard-cheese-for-stelios-in-easypizza-case. But each to their own….
This is my photo of the Earl Haig fund poppy which is on display at the National Army Museum.
This image (courtesy of NAM) is much clearer though. The poppy was made at a factory in Edinburgh and the operations there were set up Earl Haig’s wife, as few of the poppies produced in London were getting to Scotland. The factory was opened in March 1926 and initially employed just two people, but this increased to over 100 within just a few years.
The poppy in the collections of the National Army Museum dates to around 1930, at a time when poppies were made out of different materials which were charged at different prices. It wasn’t until 1954 that only the paper poppy was produced, with no fixed price but offered instead by donation.
And one thing I never knew until today, the Scottish poppy has four petals, whereas those produced in the Richmond factory in London have two petals. Which goes to show how unobservant I am…..
This is the war grave of Private Marsham Elwin Wrench, located in the older military cemetery within Earlham Cemetery. Unfortunately, the age of this soldier are wrong, he died at the age of 48 and not 42. Marsham was born in Kensington on 13 November 1872, the son of Marsham and Margaret Wrench.
At the 1881 census, the family lived at 43 Monteith Road in Bow where the older Marsham was working as a general dealer. Marsham the younger was the only boy in the family, living with his older sister Susan and his younger sisters Mary, Alice and Maud. As an aside, Martha Elizabeth Land lived in this house during the Second World War and she was one of 173 people killed at Bethnal Green underground station when people fell down the stairs and died in the crush that ensued.
At the 1891 census, Marsham was 18 years old and he had decided to join the army, where he was listed as being a gunner living at the Woolwich Barracks. He doesn’t appear in the 1901 census, so was likely serving somewhere else in the army. He had by this time got married, hence his move to Norwich, although he had been widowed by the time of the First World War. Fortunately, the war records have survived, which means there’s a story of his expeditions around the world.
Marsham joined the army in Woolwich on 11 December 1886 at the age of just 14, with his trade being listed as a musician. He signed up for the Royal Artillery, agreed to serve for 12 years and was happy to be vaccinated. He was just 4’6″ tall, weighed 5.8 stone, had brown hair and declared himself as a member of the Church of England.
Marsham was disabled with haemoptysis in June 1911 in Karachi in what was then India, but is now in Pakistan. He was moved to a hospital in Bombay before returning to England. He rejoined the army reserve on 20 August 1914 as part of the Norfolk Regiment, briefly going to serve in France. On 11 November 1914, a medical report though declared that he was unfit for service, his usual weight of 12 stone 5 lbs had fallen to 9 stone 10 lbs and he had a frequent cough.
Marsham died on 20 April 1920, and by nature of him having a war grave, he would have died of injuries incurred in the war, although I’m not sure what they were or where he went.
I’ll add now that this visit was from some weeks ago, they’re not open during the second lockdown. I’m working through old photos since I can’t currently go to pubs….
This is an image from Google Streetview of the front of the Rockingham Arms (taking its name from another pub which had been in the area), the JD Wetherspoon pub in Elephant and Castle, London. It’s not the most glamorous of buildings, it’s in the 1960s Metro Central Heights building, the former home of the Department of Health and Social Security. It was another little design error, the Government were very pleased with their new building, but it soon fell out of favour and it suffered from sick building syndrome. The civil servants moved to a lovely new building in Whitehall and this structure was repurposed to be used for residential flats.
Anyway, back to what it is now, a JD Wetherspoon pub. Punk IPA, always cheaper than Brewdog charge in their own pubs, I find that this a very drinkable beer. It might be one of Brewdog’s more generic beers, but it’s still nicely citrusy and with some depth of flavour to it.
And the chicken jalfrezi from Curry Club, which is very rarely a disappointment and wasn’t here either. Served quickly, at a hot temperature and by a staff member who was perfectly polite, it’s hard to find anything to complain about here.
The pub interior is perhaps a bit bland, but it feels like a safe environment and I’ve never experienced any problems in the times that I’ve visited here. It lacks the atmosphere of some of the more historic buildings that Wetherspoons operate and the open plan of this pub does make it all feel a bit generic. The toilets, which are located downstairs in the basement, could do with a little bit of a refurbishment as well.
The reviews for the pub aren’t great, but I think that’s more because some customers are keen to complain and the ones who are happy don’t tend to post. There was a 1-star review as the barman didn’t serve a customer who was on the phone, with the customer noting “I told him that it doesn’t matter that I’m at the phone as far as I order properly”. I suspect a fair few bar staff would have agreed with the pub here.
Anyway, all perfectly acceptable, keenly priced and just a short walk away from the London Underground.
This is the grave of James Reeve located in the churchyard of St Mary and St Walstan Church. There’s not much of a story I can tell here, but I liked the inscription which reads:
“LIfe is transitory and fleeting, death uncertain as to his approach”.
James Reeve was baptised in the church on 27 September 1771, the son of Henry Reeve and Mary Reeve. He married Martha Petchell in the church on 2 December 1802. James died on Wednesday 18 March 1829 at the age of 57 and was buried on Thursday 26 March 1829 at a service overseen by the curate Edward Postle. It’s a reminder though of how important the church was in the lives of communities, where individuals would be baptised, married and buried all at the same location.
This is St Mary and St Walstan Church in Bawburgh as it looks in 2020, and as it looked from pretty much the same spot in 1939. Not much has changed, the grave in the bottom left of the photo is new, but in the older photo there’s a grave covered in ivy. That grave is still there, but the ivy has now been removed, although it has destroyed the inscription on the stone. Sometimes I wonder why some graves are badly damaged and illegible in cemeteries, this is one of the reasons why….
This becomes a bit of a spot the difference puzzle, but I quite like seeing what has changed. The slightly wonky drainpipe in the old photo has gone from where the nave meets the chancel, a tree has been removed in the foreground, but otherwise nearly everything is reassuringly unchanged over the last eighty years.
This is another cheery little number from the collections of the National Army Museum, it’s fragments of bone taken from the damaged arm of Lieutenant Charles Fletcher, from the 48th Bengal Native Infantry. The incident took place during the Indian Rebellion when the compound at the Residency in Lucknow came under attack in 1857. A musket ball hit Fletcher, which isn’t ideal, causing this damage to his arm. The Residency building is still there in ruins, a reminder of the last days of the East India Company, before the 1858 Government of India Act transferred power to the British Raj. It’s an interesting souvenir to keep, I’m not sure that it’s something I would have kept in a little box though to remind me of the event….
I’ve seen ration biscuits that have been sent home in many museums, they weren’t particularly popular with troops and they did make for useful souvenirs. Bread couldn’t be distributed because it went mouldy, so members of the armed forces received these dried things usually made from flour, water and salt, which then had to be mixed with a liquid to become vaguely edible.
The National Army Museum has this item on display, sent back home by Trumpeter S Foster from the 12th (Prince of Wales’s Royal) Lancers. It can’t be seen from how the museum has presented it, but on the rear is the receiver’s address and two postage stamps, so it really did go through the postal system. I imagine that amused the postal authorities and it is remarkably undamaged given its journey from South Africa.
The Dictionary of the Vulgar Tongue was first published at the end of the eighteenth century, and given that the current health crisis is giving too much time to read books, I thought I’d pick a daily word from it until I got bored….
Oil of Barley
I like this rather lovely little phrase, defined by Grose simply as “strong beer”. The first bit of the phrase, the ‘oil of’ was commonly used in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries to describe many things, with the barley reference dating to at least as early as the seventeenth century.
The phrase lingered on in usage until relatively recently, where it sadly finally seems to have gone out of the vernacular.
This is the Grade I listed Church of St. Mary and St. Walstan at Bawburgh, one of the few churches which is dedicated to a Norfolk saint. The stepped nave gables give it a distinctive look and these date from 1633, when the building was repaired following some decades of decay.
There has been a church on this site since around the late tenth century, linked to the miracle of St. Walstan and the well. That well had ensured that the church had become a pilgrimage site and this brought some wealth, all suddenly brought to an end with the Dissolution of the Monasteries and the effective end of such pilgrimages. At one stage during the peak of its wealth, the church had seven Chantry priests and supported six canons.
The tower of the church dates from the twelfth century, with the chancel being from the beginning of the fourteenth century. The nave is late fifteenth century, likely having been rebuilt given the funds that had come in from the pilgrims.
This side of the churchyard drops down and the supporting buttresses are visible.
The ancient north door.
I have no idea how old this iron support is sticking out of the wall, but the bulging state of the north wall suggests there have long since been problems, even with the buttresses.
The chancel end of the church.
The bricked up doorway at the end of the chancel, the reasons for which I’m unsure of.
There doesn’t seem to have been any excessive repairs from the Victorians, with the Reverend Gabriel Young noting in the early twentieth century that there had recently been a desperate need to raise funds to fix the tower to prevent it from ruin.
The interior was closed, but apparently there are some notable wall paintings which the church hopes to have professionally restored over the next few years. In 1905, the local press reported that a handsome newly repaired wooden chancel screen had been installed in the church. The same report added that “the parish had the honour of furnishing the first couple who ever won the Dunmow Flitch in 1445”. This meant that a couple who could honestly say that they hadn’t had an argument in the first year of marriage were given a flitch of bacon.
