Category: World War 2

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St Cecilia’s Day, Henry Wood and the BBC Proms, 17th November

St Sepulchre-without-Newgate, Musician’s Chapel, St Cecilia window. 17 August 2022, Andy Scott

November 17th is St Cecilia’s Day She is the patron saint of musicians and was martyred in Rome in the Second or Third Century AD. The story goes that she was married to a non-believer, and during her marriage ceremony she sang to God in her heart (hence her affiliation with musicians). She then told her husband, that she was a professed Virgin, and that if he violated her, he would be punished by God. Ceclia told him she was being protected by an Angel of the Lord who was watching over her. Valerian, her husband, asked to see the Angel. ‘Go to the Third Milestone along the Appian Way’ he was told where he would be baptised by Pope Urban 1. Only then would he see the Angel. He followed her advice, was converted and he and his wife were, later on, martyred.

The Church in Rome, Santa Cecilia in Trastevere, is said to be built on the site of her house, and has 5th Century origins. My friend, Derek Gadd, recently visited and let me use these photographs:

Santa Cecilia in Trastevere Photo by Derek Gadd
Santa Cecilia in Trastevere Photo by Derek Gadd

St Cecilia in London

There is a window dedicated to her in the Holy Sepulchre Church-without-Newgate, In London, opposite the site of the infamous Newgate Prison.  Henry Wood, one of our most famous conductors and the founder of the Promenade Concerts, played organ here when he was 14. In 1944, his ashes were placed beneath the window dedicated to St Cecilia and, later, the Church became the National Musician’s Church.

This window is dedicated to the memory of
Sir Henry Wood, C.H.,
Founder and for fifty years Conductor of
THE PROMENADE CONCERTS
1895-1944.
He opened the door to a new world
Of sense and feeling to millions of
his fellows. He gave life to Music
and he brought Music to the People.
His ashes rest beneath.

The Concerts are now called the BBC Proms and continue an 18th and 19th Century tradition of, originally, outdoor concerts, and then indoor promenade concerts. At the end of the 19th Century, the inexpensive Promenade Concerts were put on to help broaden the interest in classical music. Henry Wood was the sole conductor.

Wikipedia reports :

Czech conductor Jiří Bělohlávek described the Proms as “the world’s largest and most democratic musical festival”.

The Eight-week Festival is held at the Royal Albert Hall. It moved here during World War 2 after the original venue, the Queen’s Hall, was destroyed in the Blitz in May 1941.

First Published on November 17th 2023 and revised in November 2024

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Gordon Russell, the Mosquito and Broadway November 14th

De Havilland DH.98 Mosquito B Mk IV Series 2n (Wikipedia CCO)

On November 14th, 1940 on the night of the Coventry blitz, a bomb dropped on a barn in a beautiful village in the Cotswolds. Broadway is a tourist attraction and was known as one of the most beautiful villages in Britain when it was the playground for many artists, writers, actors, designers and other bohemians of the late 19th Century. The Coventry raid was the most concentrated bombing raid on a UK town in the War. Why the pilot chose to drop bombs on Broadway is not known, but probably to get rid of unused bombs, on his way home and not targeted specially on Broadway. However, the Barn contained stock from the Gordon Russell shop in Mayfair, London and Gordon Russell was playing his part in the war effort.

Gordon Russell was a famous furniture designer, and during the War he turned over his carpentry workshops to the war effort. They made the wings of the famous World War Two Mosquito fighter bombers in Russell’s modernist furniture factory in the Back Lane of Broadway next to the barn. The Mosquito was fast enough to be a fighter and could carry a decent payload of bombs. Because of their flexibility and speed, they had many roles in the war, including being the pathfinder for many of the nighttime raids on Germany.

Gordon Russell Ltd also made ammunition boxes, and high-precision aircraft models for wind tunnel testing and other purposes. Gordon himself designed a utility range of furniture to minimise the amount of wood needed for new furniture during the war.

Images taken by Kevin Flude of the displays at the Gordon Russell Museum, Broadway. Showing a description of the Utility range designed by Gordon Russell during World War 2
Gordon Russell’s Utility Range WW2
The Barn destroyed by bombing by Frank Whitton
Model Spitfire for wind tunnel testing
Gordon and Don Russell 1917

Images above taken by Kevin Flude of the displays at the Gordon Russell Museum, Broadway. The Museum is well worth a visit, and Broadway itself remains a delight.

A little further research reveals that the Broadway fire brigade history pages suggests the raid was on Dec 11, and I have found another site claiming the barn was destroyed in October.

‘There were several large fires in Broadway during the war. On the night of December 11th 1940 a German bomber dropped a quantity of incendiary bombs on the village. A number of them fell on Gordon Russell’s furniture factory setting light to a large wooden, thatched barn. The building containing fine furniture and textiles, brought from London for safe keeping, was quickly destroyed. Ironically, the barn also contained a large order of furniture for Sir John Anderson – the Minister for Air Raid Precautions!‘


‘Another incendiary landed on the machine shop roof burning a hole, before being extinguished, it is believed, by a factory worker who lived nearby. The temporary plywood patch which was nailed on the underside of the hole was still in place when the factory was demolished in 2004. When a cottage adjacent to the factory was recently re-thatched, an unexploded incendiary bomb was discovered lodged in the old thatch. According to an Evesham Journal report, published at the end of the war, bombs fell in the Broadway area on seven separate occasions.‘

The two paragraphs above are taken directly from http://www.broadwayfire.co.uk/second_world_war.htm

My father, I discovered a couple of nights ago, worked on Mosquitoes in his time in the RAF. His job at the time was to salvage instruments from crashed aeroplanes, and Mosquitoes were, along with Spitfires, and Hurricanes, amongst the ones he worked on.

For more from the Almanac about Broadway, see:

The Great Broadway Paint off June 18th
and:
Henry Ford’s Love of the Cotswolds

Another source for this post was: https://www.facebook.com/share/p/nEzPogPpsy7QD4US/

First published on 14th November 2024

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The Ultimate RAF London Blitz Story September 15th 1940

Black and white photo from a german plane above another german bomber over docklands in the Blitz

On September 15th 1940 Ray Holmes, World War 2 RAF Pilot, flying a Hurricane, took on three Luftwaffe Bombers over Central London.  He shot one down, chased another off and engaged the third which seemed to be heading for Buckingham Palace. Between the 8th and 13th of September 1940, the Palace had been hit 5 times. The London Blitz had only ‘begun’ on September 7th though the first raid on the City of London was on the 25th August on Fore Street.

Holmes, by now had ran out of bullets, but deliberately targeted the fin of the Dornier bomber, and crashed into it causing the bomber to spiral down into Victoria Station. Holmes’ hurricane, spiralled down out of control, but he was able to bail out and landed in a dustbin, much to the bemusement of the locals. Holmes died aged 90 in 2005.

This post is heavily based on the story below, which is told in full detail.

https://www.mylondon.news/news/nostalgia/battle-britain-fighter-pilot-who-19963243

Al;so on September 26th – The Mayflower sails from Plymouth, finally getting away from the Old World for the New World. 1620

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St Giles Day and Cripplegate September 1st

Public domainThe Master of St Giles, National Gallery. ‘St Giles and the Hind’
This work is in the public domain in its country of origin and other countries and areas where the copyright term is the author’s life plus 100 years or fewer.

Today, is St Giles’ Feast Day. His story is mostly unknown, but he was thought to be a hermit who had a pet Hind in the Arles District of France perhaps in the 9th Century. The hounds of King Wamba (a Visigothic King) were chasing the deer, and shot an arrow into the undergrowth. The King and his men followed to discover Giles wounded by the arrow, protecting the hind, who he held in his arms. The hounds were miraculously stayed motionless as they leaped towards the hind. Wamba apparently means ‘Big paunch’ in Gothic. He was also called Flavius. Giles was injured in the leg, although the image above shows the arrow in his hand.

St Giles is, therefore, the patron saint of disabled people. He was very popular in medieval Britain, with over 150 churches dedicated to him, including four in London. Perhaps the two most famous are St Giles Without Cripplegate in London and St Giles Cathedral in Edinburgh.

St Giles Cripplegate, photographed by the Author at night from the Barbican Centre.

St Giles Cripplegate was built in the 11th Century, and rebuilt in the 14th Century and again in 1545-50 after nearly being destroyed by fire. It survived the Great Fire of London, being just beyond the extent of the Fire. It was badly damaged in the Blitz, but the Tower and the outer walls survived. Oliver Cromwell married Elizabeth Bourchier here. John Foxe of the Book of Martyrs, John Speed, the Cartographer, Martin Frobisher and John Milton were buried here. Milton’s coffin was opened in 1793 and he was said to have looked as if he had just been buried. One of those present, then tried to pull Milton’s teeth out, which a bystander helped by hitting them with a stone. The few teeth Milton had left in his head were divided between the men, who also took a rib bone and locks of his hair. The Caretaker then opened the coffin for anyone who wanted to see the corpse!

From the London City Wall Trail.

Cripplegate, one of the Gates in the City Wall (originally the North Gate of the Roman Fort) may be named because it was a good place to gather for those trying to beg alms for their disabilities. Although it has also been said that there was an underground tunnel from the Gate’s Barbican to the Gate which in Anglo Saxon is a Crepel. Or because of the cure of cripples when Edmund the Martyr’s remains passed through the gate in 1010.

The Corner Tower of the London City Wall, the Barbican in the background, and the tower of St Giles’ Church behind the Tower. Photo by the author

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Holocaust Memorial Day January 27th

Today is also the Roman Festival of Castor and Pollux. (more on that on the 15th July at the other festival of the Dioscuri.

photo of The Kindertransport statue, Liverpool Street Station, London 2006 by Frank Meisler and Arie Oviada.
The Kindertransport statue, Liverpool Street Station, London 2006 by Frank Meisler and Arie Oviada photo by K Flude

The statue commemorates the arrival of Jewish children by train (1938/9) in the Kindertransport, sent by parents desperate to save their children from fascist genocide in Germany and Austria. The children were unaccompanied and, in the statue, stand proud as they arrive in a strange country. The children have tags on their clothes, and the train track represents both the trains to the death camps and the train to safety. For more photos and information: talkingbeautifulstuff.com

Montaillou by Emmanual Le Roy Ladurie

On the subject of prejudice, genocide and abuse of power, I was reminded of one of the formative reads of my life. I met the great Emmanuel Le Roy Ladurie at dinner at my father-in-law’s house in the 1980s. I was awestruck because Montaillou was one of the early histories ‘from below’, where the focus was not on kings, queens nor of the flux of states and empires, but on the lives (and deaths) of ordinary people. Something that has continued as a focus of my historical interest.

Nor, before Ladurie, had I imagined that medieval lives could be so minutely brought to life. The book was a sensation, selling over a quarter of a million copies. Professor Ladurie became a media star, and, it remains one of the great historical reads. (Of course, the book and the historiography now attracts some criticism, but do read it!)

The context of the story is appalling. In 1208, the Pope decided to launch a crusade against heretics in the South of France. The Cathars, as revealed under interrogation by the Cathodic Inquisition, had many unorthodox and heretical ideas, believing in a Good God and an Evil God, and that we are all angels trapped in this terrible world by the Evil God. Women and men were equal and could be reincarnated into each other’s bodies, awaiting the time they became ‘perfect’ and released to their spiritual form for eternity.

The Crusade and Inquisition that followed were savage, with many thousand slaughtered. At the massacre at Béziers, for example, on 22 July 1209, the Catholic forces led by Arnaud-Amaury, a Cistercian abbot and Commander of the army, battered down the doors of St Mary Magdalene to get at the refugees inside. He was asked how the soldiers could separate the Catholics from the Cathars. He replied “Caedite eos. Novit enim Dominus qui sunt eius“—”Kill them all, the Lord will recognise His own”. Or so it is said.

All 7,000 men, women and children seeking sanctuary were killed. Thousands more in the town were mutilated, blinded, dragged behind horses, used for target practice and massacred. Arnaud-Amaury wrote to Pope Innocent III

“Today your Holiness, twenty thousand heretics were put to the sword, regardless of rank, age, or sex.”

But, reading Montaillou is a pleasure because it brings those persecuted souls back to life in all their human glory. It is also a reminder that it is by intolerance and ‘othering’ of normal homo sapiens that allows the conditions for evil to flourish. We need to treat all human life as sacred and to bring to bear our human empathy and capacity for mercy. Anything less allows the slaughter of the innocent.

First written in January 2023 and revised Jan 2024

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VIRTUAL GUIDED WALKS COMING UP

THE REBIRTH OF SAXON LONDON ARCHAEOLOGY VIRTUAL WALK

Reconstruction of Dark Age London Bridge
London in the 5th Century Reconstruction painting.

Sunday 4th July 2021 6.30pm

An exploration of what happened following the Roman Period. How did a Celtic speaking Latin educated Roman City become, first deserted, then recovered to become the leading City in a Germanic speaking Kingdom?

To book

THE GREAT FIRE OF LONDON ANNIVERSARY VIRTUAL WALK

Virtual Zoom Walk on Sunday Sept 5th 6.30pm

On the Anniversary of the Great Fire of London we retrace the route of the fire of 1666 from Pudding Lane to Smithfield.

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RING IN THE EQUINOX VIRTUAL WALK

Tuesday 21st September 2021 7.30pm

On this walk we look at London at the Equinox, its calendars, folklore and events associated with the beginning of Autumn

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MYTHS, LEGENDS, & HALLOWEEN VIRTUAL WALK

SUNDAY 31st October 2021 6.30pm

The walk tells the story of London’s myths and legends and the celtic origins of Halloween. .

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ZEPPELIN NIGHTS – A VIRTUAL WALK FOR REMEMBRANCE SUNDAY

Sunday 14 November 2021 6.30pm

We follow the route of a Zeppelin Raid through London. On the way we discover London in World War 1

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