Walking. Gossip. Travel.

Category: UK

  • London – Kensington and Chelsea (Borough of) – National Army Museum (Hellfire Corner Sign)

    London – Kensington and Chelsea (Borough of) – National Army Museum (Hellfire Corner Sign)

    The National Army Museum is very proud of having this item in its collections, it’s an original wooden sign that was in a dangerous location at a junction on the Menin Road leading from Menin to Ypres. Many soldiers would have gone by the sign during the First World War, but the area was under near constant attack by German soldiers whose nearby defences meant that they had good visibility and it became a very dangerous stretch of road.

    There’s a stone marker at the site now, an otherwise innocuous roundabout on the outskirts of Ypres. The marker is one of a series which show the furthest point that the German troops were able to reach.

    The sign was brought back from Belgium by William Storie (above) and he used it as a promotional device to encourage sales at his shop in Edinburgh. The above photo was taken in March 1920, with the sign being seemingly nearly undamaged since then, although it seems to have spent much of its life in a storeroom before being donated to the National Army Museum in 1996.

    There’s an interesting video above which shows Hellfire Corner (i) during the First World War, (ii) before the roundabout was constructed and (iii) how it looks now. It’s possible to see an earlier Hellfire Corner sign in the video, but the National Army Museum believes the one on display is the final one from that location.

  • Wramplingham – Name Origin

    Wramplingham – Name Origin

    I’m quite intrigued by the village name of Wramplingham, particularly how it hasn’t lost its ‘W’ over the years if it’s not pronounced. As an aside I’ll mention now, from 2003 until 2013, Bill Bryson lived in the village, quite a claim to fame (for the village I meant, although perhaps for him)…. Anyway, back to the village name, The Concise Oxford Dictionary of English Placenames notes:

    Wramplingham, Norfolk. Wranplincham in Domesday Book, Wramplingham in 1185. The first element is a tribal name, connected probably with words such as wramp ‘a twist’ (17th century), wrimpled (wrinkled, c.1430). It may be derived from a nickname formed from the base of these words.

    I think it’s fair to say that no-one has a clue exactly how this village got its name. It’s just that someone likely had a nickname of Wramp, and this was his homestead and that of his followers. But back to why this village name hasn’t become Ramplingham over the centuries. It seems (I had to look this up) that the ‘W’ was pronounced until sometime around the sixteenth or seventeenth centuries. As I understand, it was more of a hard ‘V’, so it might have been pronounced as Vramplingham.

  • Wramplingham – War Memorial

    Wramplingham – War Memorial

    Wramplingham War Memorial, which was unveiled in 1920 and is quite a tall and slender piece of stone. There were seven men killed from the parish during the First World War and one during the Second World War. This seems quite a high number for such a small village, especially as there were no Pals Regiments from Norfolk where friends were fight (and often die) together. Some of those who died didn’t live in the village, but had relatives here, but, it must still have been a great loss for Wramplingham.

    The names of those who died are listed on the stone, although they’re a little hard to read and some attention is needed here to restore them. Those who died in the First World War were:

    Arthur Yorke Bailey

    John Stanford Cavalier

    William Robert Collings

    John Robert Howes

    Frederick William Mitchell

    John Robert Oldfield

    Percival Ernest Thompson

    And, the following servicemen died during the Second World War:

    William Leonard Tolver

    There’s no point in me working through the histories of these individuals, as it has already been done at http://www.roll-of-honour.com/Norfolk/Wramplingham.html.

  • Great Melton – St. Mary’s Church

    Great Melton – St. Mary’s Church

    St. Mary’s and All Saints’ share a churchyard in the village of Great Melton, similar to the situation in South Walsham.

    This is where the nave of St. Mary’s once stood (I’m standing in front of the tower to take the photo), with All Saints’ visible on the left. The churches were both independent until the eighteenth century, but then it was decided to merge the two and just use St. Mary’s. A decision was later made that St. Mary’s was too small, so they decided to fix up the by now roofless and slightly fallen down All Saints’ Church.

    The church remained in use until 1883, it’s a shame in my view that the Victorians decided to take down most of the building, although I understand that some of the stone was used in the rebuild of All Saints’. It was reported in the Thetford & Watton Times in 1883 that the locals did want to keep both, but given the lack of finances they wanted to preserve what they considered to be the more historic of the two churches, and that was All Saints which had Saxon origins.

    A trig mark at the base of the tower.

    Looking up at the tower, which is in pretty good shape. Well, bar the big holes in it. I understand that English Heritage have provided some money to secure it, which I think relates to the brickwork at the top as opposed to the bit of wood propping the walls up at the front of the photo.

    Rather beautiful….

    The tithe map, with St. Mary’s being the lower of the two churches.

    The enclosures map.

  • Wramplingham – Village Sign

    Wramplingham – Village Sign

    I like this, Wramplingham village has, by design, placed its sign in the River Tiffey. I say by design as it’s in the water in all the photos that I can see.

    The sign itself features the water mill on which much of the village’s history is around, although the rather lovely mill itself was knocked down in 1945.

  • London – Kensington and Chelsea (Borough of) – National Army Museum (Letter to Wife of Man Killed)

    London – Kensington and Chelsea (Borough of) – National Army Museum (Letter to Wife of Man Killed)

    This letter (clicking on the image brings up a larger version) is in the collections of the National Army Museum and was written on 23 November 1915 by Corporal Kempstell to the wife of the killed soldier Harry J Baldwin. This must have been a traumatic letter to write, and of course to receive, although it’s been very thoughtfully done and doesn’t seem to have been taken too much from a template.

    The museum notes that the place of death is never given, although there’s an address at the top of the letter which is the 2nd King’s Royal Rifles in France. I can find details of only one Harry Baldwin dying in 1915 and that person died on 22 November 1915, so I assume it must be the same one unless there’s something of a coincidence. Given that, the letter is nonsense, as Harry died in Basra fighting the Ottomans, so he wouldn’t likely have been killed by a German shell. Harry was buried near Basra, at a war cemetery which was moved to a new location in 1997.

    If it is the case that it’s the same Harry who died in Basra, I’m not entirely sure that the wife would have believed the rest of the letter when the truth came out.

  • Norwich – Earlham Cemetery (Alan George Gibling)

    Norwich – Earlham Cemetery (Alan George Gibling)

    This is the war grave of Alan George Gibling, located at Earlham Cemetery in the main area and not within the military section. I can’t find out anything about his period in the First World War itself, but the story here (for me anyway) is that this is the first time I’ve submitted a request for the CWGC to change information on their web-site.

    But, going back a bit, Alan was born on 3 June 1896, the son of George Joseph Gibling and Ellen Gibling (nee Dix). At the 1901 census, he was living with his parents and his brother John Charles and his sister Margaret Ellen, as well as a servant Baldry Gibling, although it’s confusing why she shared the same surname with no obvious family links. They lived at 191 College Road in the city and Alan was educated at Avenue Road School and then at the City of Norwich School between 1 September 1908 and 20 July 1912.

    At the 1911 census, the family were still living in the same property and this time the family has been joined by Geoffrey Dix, with the servant now 19-year old Alice Nichols. This census also reveals that George and Ellen lost one child at some point during their marriage.

    Alan’s war records seem to have been lost in the fire during the Second World War, as so many were, but he joined the Norfolk Regiment, but I’m not sure whether or not he would have seen active service. Alan died on home soil on 17 October 1915 at the age of 19.

    Back to the CWGC, the record on their web-site lists him as Allen George, and I wonder whether someone has looked at his mother’s name and got muddled up. Mistakes are not uncommon due to the challenging way that the information was gathered around a century ago, with the CWGC noting they make changes to their database most days based on details provided. All of the other war details, mentions on war memorials, his school records and censuses have him listed as Alan George. I was going to just leave the CWGC record incorrect rather than spend time compiling the evidence that they required, but it seemed the right thing to do for Alan’s permanent record to be correct.

    Although we’ll likely now find out that I’ve misunderstood something and no change is needed, but we shall see….

  • London – Kensington and Chelsea (Borough of) – National Army Museum (Bombardier Beer Pump)

    London – Kensington and Chelsea (Borough of) – National Army Museum (Bombardier Beer Pump)

    This is an exhibit from the rather wonderful National Army Museum and, as another of my irrelevant asides, it’s a word that I always have to think to pronounce. In this case, the beer from Wells Brewery is pronounced as the English military word, whereas if talking about the French Canadian multi-national Bombardier train and aviation company, it’s the different French pronunciation.

    As for beer, and this pump was donated to the museum in 2015, it was marketed for a time as the “beer of England”, although that was somewhat aspirational branding. There was some controversy a couple of years ago when the pump clip moved away from the traditional one in the photo, with the St George’s Flag in the background, towards a more generic style. The brewers perhaps felt that the claim of being the ‘beer of England’ was not really based in reality, so they’re kept the new generic branding and changed their claim to it being a “British beer”. This, to be fair, is now accurate.

  • Random – Scarborough’s Railway Bench

    Random – Scarborough’s Railway Bench

    Just as a random post, but I quite liked this story in the Scarborough News about the longest railway bench in the world. Despite having been to Scarborough on numerous occasions, I hadn’t managed to notice this 139 metre long bench which dates to around 1883.

    It’s rather lovely that it has been preserved, although I note that Network Rail have replaced all the nuts and bolts, as well as an undetermined amount of wood. There’s something about Trigger’s broom here that there’s going to be nothing old left other than the original iron supports, but it’s still a very worthwhile project given how so many railway stations and structures have been allowed to crumble.

    NB, as I’ve haven’t been to see this bench, the main photo above is at the start of my very brave second coast to coast walk a few years ago I did with Liam (I was the bravest). Might as well advertise that again here, here are the links  🙂  Coast to Coast Two  [ Day 0 | Day 1 | Day 2 | Day 3 | Day 4 | Day 5 | Day 6 | Day 6+1 ]

  • London – Camden – British Museum (Rosetta Stone)

    London – Camden – British Museum (Rosetta Stone)

    This was from my visit to the British Museum a few weeks ago, the most viewed object in the collections apparently. This has meant that I’ve never really seen it that clearly before, it’s like the Mona Lisa at the Louvre, there are nearly always other visitors standing there and taking photos in front of it. Hence why I took so many photos of it this time with the museum being so empty when I visited in late October.

    There’s not much point writing much about the Rosetta Stone, it’s done much better in countless other places. But it dates to 196BC and it was rediscovered by the French in 1799, with the British deciding that they wanted it in 1802. The stone went to the British Museum in the same year and it has been there ever since. As visitors kept fiddling with it, the stone was barriered off in 1847, not that this stopped some people. Since 2004 it has been placed behind a rather more secure screen.