Object of the Week: Women’s Voluntary Service Uniform

“If it should be done the WVS will do it”. Established in 1938 by Stella Isaacs, Marchioness of Reading, the Women’s Voluntary Service (WVS) for Civil Defence was there to assist the Air Raid Precaution Service during the Second World War. Often this meant setting up rest centres that could provide shelter, food and comfort to those who had been affected by the Blitz. In particular they also aided the evacuation of children from London to safer, often more rural, areas, such as Bedfordshire. They supported their fellow land army recruits, for example by making pies to help keep up their strength during harvest time. Often they provided refreshments for troops stationed locally. ‘British’ restaurants and Rest Centres were set up across the country to care for the displaced that the WVS managed.

Visit to Bedford's British Restaurant, 1942, the kitchen. Left to right: unidentified WVS member, Lady Reading, Miss Rogers wearing official uniform jacket and skirt, Hon. Pearl Lawson-Johnson, unidentified WVS member wearing official white overalls.  © The Bedfordshire Times/ Times and Citizen

 In the Museum collection we have an example of one Bedfordshire woman’s WVS uniform, sadly we have not been able to trace as yet the original owner. The uniform of the WVS had to be designed in a hurry between April 1938 and the start of the war. The uniform was designed by London couturier Digby Morton and included a suit, blouse and overcoat. Lady Reading also managed to talk the head of Harrods into making and supplying them.

The Hon. Pearl Lawson-Johnson escorting Lady Reading to the British restaurant in Mill Street.
Both are dressed in official WVS coats and felt hats bearing the WVS badge.

© The Bedfordshire Times/ Times and Citizen

The coat and hat were for sale from 20 different outlets around the country at first. These were available to any WVS badge-holder, although it was stated that no one was obliged to wear the garments.

By October a tweed jacket and skirt, as well as red blouses and WVS overalls extended the range. In December the embroidered badges, scarves and white overalls were launched at 229 shops, which were listed as authorised retailers for the merchandise.

WVS Civil Defence embroidered badge with Bedfordshire name tab.

Name tabs for counties and county boroughs were issued, alongside instructions on how uniform should be worn; “It should be complete and should not be mixed with ordinary clothes; brown low heeled shoes and no jewellery are advised”.

There had been many enquiries for a suit in a lighter material for summer use, but wartime difficulties in the supply, dying and distribution of woollen and cotton materials, meant that it wasn’t possible. The solution to this was the launch of the official dress in green, manufactured to start with only by Lillywhites of London. By early 1942 all uniforms were administered centrally by the Ministry of Supply due to rationing. Material was provided for those who desired to make their own. The dress in our collection is a Utility dress manufactured by Brilkie.

WVS official dress, manufactured by Brilkie, BEDFM 1997.8.1

In the collection we have a group of photographs published by the Bedfordshire Times of a visit by the founder of the WVS, Lady Reading to Bedford in February 1942. She visited the British Restaurant, 36 Mill Street, at the old fire station.

Lady Reading speaking to Sergeant Pedder. Behind the Sergeant is Miss Rogers.

© The Bedfordshire Times/ Times and Citizen

The WVS continued as an organisation after the war and changed its name to the Women’s Royal Voluntary Service in 1966, now known as WRVS, which continues to provide charitable assistance to those in difficulty.

Lady Reading enjoying a hot bowl of soup at Bedford's British Restaurant.

© The Bedfordshire Times/ Times and Citizen

If you or someone you know have memories (such as enjoying a bowl of soup) at the British Restaurant or as a member of the WVS/ WRVS in Bedfordshire and their contribution during the Second World War, then please do share them with us on the blog comments, email chag@bedford.gov.uk, post on Facebook , post your pictures to our Flickr group, or Tweet.

Lydia, Keeper of Social History

Acknowledgements:

Thanks to Bedford's Times and Citizen for permission to reproduce the images of Lady Reading’s visit to Bedford in 1942.

Thanks to information provided by WRVS and their factsheet WVS uniform, written by Matthew McMurray, WRVS archivist, http://www.wrvs.org.uk/Uploads/Documents/About%20us/wvs_wartime_uniform.pdf  See link for copyright restrictions.



Mirror, Mirror on the Wall…..

This morning, as like every other, the last thing I did was to check my appearance in the mirror before I left the house to brave the world, and that is when it all started. When and how did mirrors begin? They must have been invented by someone, somewhere surely?

A quick look at various websites came up with a wealth of information about mirrors from around the world, through the past, modern day scientific types and even some scary futuristic uses of mirrors!

It turns out that simple mirrors made from pieces of polished stone such as obsidian and volcanic glass have been unearthed in Central and South America dated to 2000 BC. More sophisticated mirrors, manufactured from sheets of polished copper, have been found from at a number places around the world including Mesopotamia from 4000 BC, in ancient Egypt from 3000 BC and from China around 2000 BC.

The oldest mirrors in our collections found in Bedfordshire, dated 400 BC to AD 100, and are mere babies compared to those from the ancient world!



Two near complete mirrors showing the decorated handle and highly stylistic
Celtic Art design engraved on the back of the mirror plate.
Left: Old Warden Mirror. Right: Bromham mirror.



At least 4 bronze mirrors have been found in Bedfordshire; 2 from Old Warden, 1 from Bromham and 1 from the south of the county at Pegsdon.  This is quite a lot considering only 58 mirrors from this period, the Late Iron Age, are known of in the whole of Britain.



Making a bronze mirror would have called upon specialised skills. The first step would be to extract and smelt copper and tin from the natural ore, these metals would then be merged to produce bronze. The handle would then be formed from bees wax and covered in clay to form a mould. This would then be heated to allow the melted wax to be poured off and to be replaced with molten bronze. Once this was cooled the bronze handle would be broken out of the clay mould.

Detail of engraved pattern on the Old Warden mirror.

The plate would either be made from cast bronze or a sheet of bronze which would then be painstakingly hammered and formed to the required shape, size and thickness. The backside of the mirror would then be decorated with engraved interlaced swirling, patterns and the front ground and polished to produce the reflective surface. Finally the handle would be riveted to the mirror plate.

A typical mirror of this type is about 350 to 400 mm long and the round or kidney shaped plate is about 200-300 mm in diameter and is 1 to 2 mm thick. Serious archaeological, academic research into this restricted group of functional yet highly decorated objects has concluded that they represent so much more than merely a way of checking personal appearance.



The polished side of the mirror, now tarnished.

 The very rarity of these objects combined with the sublime skill and craftsmanship need to produce them would ensure that only the wealthiest and most powerful individuals in a community would be able to own them.



As many of these mirrors were found during the Victorian period the exact location of where they were excavated is not known. Those with known provenance seem to be associated either with ritual deposition in watery contexts such as lakes and rivers or in burials as grave goods to accompany an individual into the next life. The association of mirrors with either a group ritual at a waterside shrine or as a treasured procession for an individual reinforces their high almost magical status.   

Mirror ownership as a symbol of power seems to be even more powerful when you actually consider the properties a mirror has. Its reflective qualities allowed the user to see not only their own face but if positioned correctly the user could clearly see behind. This “third eye” effect could be of great practical benefit to the user as well as making them appear to be all knowing.

Yet more magical power stemming from the mirror surface is unleashed when the owner turns the reflective surface around to face the sunlight or moonlight. Now the mirror surface acts as a miniature version of either the sun or the moon and the captured rays could then be made to dazzle on lookers. The appearance that the mirror and its owner were able to command rays of light and use them to induce blindness would have been a powerful weapon to control and instil fear into a community.

As an archaeologist I have long realised that late Iron Age mirrors are extremely rare and Bedfordshire is rather fortunate to several complete examples I had not really appreciated the symbolism and power associated with them, until today.

Liz, Keeper of Archaeology

Frederick Burnaby: Victorian Bedford's Hercules

Frederick Burnaby has been described as a modern day (well Victorian) Hercules and was born in Bedford in 1842 at St. Peter’s Rectory (now part of Bedford School buildings). Colonel Burnaby’s achievements precede him, having survived frostbite, typhus, an exploding air balloon and arsenic poisoning. He successfully explored Uzbekistan, where it was so cold his beard froze solid and snapped off, was Colonel of the Queens household cavalry, became an MP, founded the society newspaper Vanity Fair, crossed the channel by air, wrote a string of bestselling books, commanded the Turkish army and died a heroic death in battle – welcome to the remarkable life of Bedford-born Fred Burnaby.

St. Peter's Rectory, Bedford where Fred Burnaby was born in 1842

Even as a child, Fred Burnaby was known for his fearless nature. Friends commented on how they would stand aghast at Burnaby’s daring in jumping the wide backwater at Newnham to save walking over the wooden bridge. As Frederick grew up (quite literally: he reached a whopping 6’ 4”) this confident and fearless nature would lead him to some astonishing achievements. Not content with the more common pastimes of the day, Frederick became interested in ballooning in the summer of 1864, he joined Monsieur Goddard a French balloonist in taking a flight from Chelsea gardens over London. Unfortunately, Goddard decided last minute that Burnaby would be too heavy for his balloon ‘The Eagle’. Undeterred Fred jumped into the balloon at the point of take-off as a stow-away. Amazingly, Burnaby’s 16 stone weight remained undetected by Goddard who was busy fuelling the fire.

Burnaby’s ballooning career excelled when in 1882 he departed from Dover in a balloon borrowed from Mr Wright. Setting off for the Channel, he arrived later that day in Normandy, startling some local chickens and becoming the first hot-air balloonist to travel solo from England to France.

Photograph of Colonel Frederick Burnaby by Thomas Fall.

Fred Burnaby was also renowned for his amazing strength. He could break a horseshoe apart with his bare hands and his party trick was to bend a poker double round a dull dinner guest’s neck. The most comical demonstration of his strength was at Windsor Castle. Burnaby was a member of the Royal Horse Guards, an elite brigade called the Blues. A horse dealer had come into possession of a couple of very small ponies, and brought them to show Queen Victoria. As a joke, Burnaby’s fellow Blues drove the ponies into Burnaby’s upstairs room. Fred was suitably amused, but then came the difficulty that the ponies would not descend the stairs. Burnaby solved the dilemma. Taking a pony under each arm he walked downstairs with them and set them in the courtyard to the great relief and amazement of their owner.

David Litchfield's Cartoon of Burnaby taking the ponies down the stairs at Windsor. To see more of David's fantastic artwork go to http://www.davidlitchfieldillustration.com.

Frederick Burnaby died at Khartoum, Asia in battle in 1885. He was killed during an ambush by Sudanese warriors, aged only 42. He was mourned by the nation, especially here in Bedford where a memorial window was placed in St. Peters Church in his honour. Burnaby was a favourite of Queen Victoria and she reportedly fainted when told of his death.

Burnaby related places in Bedford are: A commemorative window in St Peter’s Church, Burnaby House on Burnaby Road (A boarding house for Bedford School students founded in 1891), and the Burnaby Arms pub on Stanley Street - cheers Fred! 

Memorial window at St. Peter's Church: Depicts Isaiah (2:4) "And they shall beat their swords into plow shares and their spears into pruning hooks.... (In memory) ...of Colonel Burnaby born in this parish fell at Abu Klea Jan 17th 1885" 
(© NA 2005 - see Bedford Virtual Library) 

We would love to know, inspired of course by Burnaby's dinner party antics, what party tricks you have up your sleeves, so feel free to share them with us on the blog comments, email chag@bedford.gov.uk, post on Facebook , post your pictures to our Flickr group, or Tweet.   
Lydia Saul, Keeper of Social History

This article has also been published in The Bedford Clanger newspaper this month - this can be viewed online at http://www.scribd.com/doc/64064341/sept2011-issue4 or is available from local information outlets, as well as local cafes.

Object of the Week – Andy Warhol’s ‘Tomato: Campbell Soup I’

Usually on the Object of the Week blog we show you an object which you won’t be able to see in the flesh until we reopen, but this week’s object is one that you can, as it is going out on loan to an exhibition at the De La Warr Pavilion in Bexhill.

Exhibitions seem to work in seasons, with galleries opening and closing exhibitions at the same time. Exhibitions that started at the beginning of the summer are closing now and new exhibitions are opening which means lots of paper work, packing and assessing the condition of objects. It’s great, as not only does a wider audience get to see the works in our collection and find out about us, but we build good partnerships with other galleries, so that if they have something in their collection that we want to show in Bedford it’s a lot easier to arrange. Our popular Toulouse-Lautrec exhibition was the result of just such a partnership with the British Museum.



Examining the condition of a Warhol screeprint.

 This month you can see works from Bedford in Suffolk, Cumbria, Bath, Kent, Sussex, and if you want to travel a little further afield, Rotterdam in The Netherlands. The Warhol is quite a straight forward loan, but it’s not unusual for our works to travel to several venues. Frederick Etchells ‘Progression’ 1914-15 has just returned from a touring exhibition which ended at Tate Britain, after previously being at Nasher Museum of Art in North Carolina and The Peggy Guggenheim Collection in Venice.

Warhol’s ‘Tomato: Campbell Soup I’ will form part of the ‘Warhol is Here’ exhibition, which looks well worth a visit. Warhol first exhibited his iconic soup cans in Los Angeles in the early sixties as a series of 32 paintings: each one a different flavour from the Campbell catalogue, lined up on narrow individual shelves as if in a supermarket. Like Coca-Cola, Campbell had become an enduring image of American life, its label design had not changed in over fifty years and its price in almost forty. Through Warhol’s work it became one of the most recognisable images of Pop Art.

On being asked why he decided to paint soup cans, Warhol answered “Because I drink it”.

Victoria Partridge
Keeper of Fine and Decorative Art

‘Tomato: Campbell Soup I’ was purchased with the aid of a grant from The Art Fund
De La Warr Pavilion ‘Warhol is Here’ 24 September 2011 – 26 February 2012

Mammoth Traffic Problems Hit Bedford High Street Again!!

Like most of us, I have watched films and read books about life in the Ice Age. More often or not these films have involved a variety of hairy but funny and cute animal characters either struggling through an endless frozen landscape or fleeing catastrophic floods. Though I enjoyed the films I did not really give them a second thought, until recently when my attention was grabbed by some information   that I came upon as I was sorting through our database. The records showed photographs of Mammoth tusks and Woolly Rhinoceros bones!

As I got more and more drawn into the database I discovered that a whole host of  Ice Age mammal remains have been recovered from under our pavements and roads, and not just in one location but all over the place.



Map of Ice Age Mammals found in Bedford and surrounding areas. The finds include Mammoths, Straight-tusked Elephants, Reindeer, Hippos, Bison and Woolly Rhino's.

 You can download a PDF of this map here.

The story with our collections it seems starts in the 1860s and is directly connected to quarrying for gravel in the river valleys. This gravel was an essential building material for the urban expansion of Bedford town, its roads and railways, in the Victorian era.

During this period the digging of gravel was done by hand with shovels and wheel barrows. As the workmen dug down into the valley soils they were in a brilliant position to notice anything unusual and odd in amongst the gravel pebbles. The finding of fossils and old objects from the ancient past in the gravel was commonly known and often antiquarians would cultivate and encourage the men to find and keep such finds by buying the items from them.

Mammoth tooth found at St. Cuthberts, Bedford

Though a large part of our Ice Age mammal remains were collected during the mid to late nineteenth century, finds from modern day mechanised gravel extraction quarries are still regularly made and these form an important part of the collection too.

So, it appears that our image of a mammoth walking down the High Street is not fictional but is based on solid fact. Finds of Mammoth bones and tusks have been dug up from not only the High Street but from Horne Lane, Midland Road and St Cuthbert’s church yard. Even more amazingly it is not just mammoths, remains of extinct Bison, Reindeer, Elephants and Woolly Rhinoceros have come to light too.

Bison tusk found at Horne Lane, Bedford



Elephant/Mammoth tusk found at Bedford High Street

So, next time you are walking along the Embankment, the High Street or out in the Ouse Valley countryside imagine you are walking with Ice Age mammals.

Liz, Keeper of Archaeology

Object of the Week - Armorial Teapot

For the last week I have had my head well and truly stuck in teapots. Despite being one of the few people in this country that doesn’t drink tea, it’s been fascinating. There are nearly 100 teapots in the collection, from delicate early 18th century China teapots to beautiful Victorian gothic teapots.

Meissen teapot about 1725-1730 and Charles Meigh Gothic teapot about 1842

To begin with I was just looking at them from a purely aesthetic point of view but after looking below the surface each one can tell an important story. For example, there is the early Meissen teapot decorated by Christoph Conrad Hunger who ran away to Vienna with Meissen’s secrets and helped set up a rival company. Another is a Staffordshire teapot that has the secret emblems of the Jacobite Rebellion hidden in its decoration. Even the size of teapots is interesting, the earlier they are the smaller they are reflecting the exorbitant price of tea before taxes on it were dropped.


For me, what is really interesting about teapots is their role in the race to produce porcelain in Europe. Like the tea that brewed inside them, the first teapots came from China. Though silver and ceramic factories imitated their shape and decoration, it was the delicate Chinese porcelain that was most prized. Potters realised if they could match the hardness and delicacy of the Chinese teapots they could create a whole new market that could not only compete with the imports but eventually take over. Only one problem… they didn’t know how! The factory of Meissen in Germany were one of the first to discover the technique and by 1719 they had the monopoly on European porcelain. Unfortunately for Meissen (but great for the rest of Europe) unscrupulous Meissen employees sold the secrets of porcelain and rival factories were started up. In England, it wasn’t until the 1740s that several factories succeeded in producing porcelain, but it took many years of experimenting with different materials to produce a porcelain that could cope with hot water as well as its Chinese equivalents.


One result of the inability to produce porcelain in England was that if an Englishman wanted his coat of arms painted on a tea set he would have to have it done in China and then sent back to England. Which brings me to this week’s object of the week, an armorial teapot from about 1760.

Armorial Teapot from China, about 1760

 Though on first glance you might be thinking “out of the 100 teapots in CHAG’s collections surely there is a more beautiful one than this?” You would be right. I could have shown you the gilded teapot shaped as a Roman soldier holding a dolphin or a fantastical teapot shaped like a monkey. But this particular teapot has had me playing detective, and I still haven’t found all the answers.


If you look closely at the motto below the arms it reads ‘LOYAL AU MOAT’.



Detail from the Armorial teapot



This was my first mystery, try as I might I could not find a coat of arms for a family that was ‘loyal until a deep water filled ditch that surrounds a castle’ which made me think the motto was wrong. This isn’t unusual with armorial china. When an image of a family’s coat of arms was sent to China important details could be lost in translation. Here, the ‘A’ in moat should be the ‘R’ of mort. The inscription would then read ‘Loyal until Death’ – the family motto of Michael Barnwell.


So who was Michael Barnwell? This is where it gets more interesting. A little research revealed that Michael Barnwell worked for the East India Company and died in 1792. The East India Company had had the monopoly on all trade between Britain and Asia since 1600. From 1678 tea became one of its most profitable cargo, and with the tea came porcelain, which acted as ballast for the light load. So Michael Barnwell’s teapot not only illustrates China’s prowess in porcelain production and the trade in armorial china, but is also inextricably linked to the importing of tea to Britain. Not such an ordinary teapot after all.


Victoria Partridge
Keeper of Fine and Decorative Art

What I found out this week: If you ask a certain kind of question when you work in a museum you can find yourself on an interesting journey.

Liz, our Keeper of Archaeology, has been preparing a blog post on mammoths in Bedfordshire coming next week!), and while chatting about it, it raised the question in my mind about the way the climate in Bedford has changed over the centuries and millennia, and the things that have caused this. In the museum's galleries (now all packed away for the redevelopment) were geological specimens from Bedfordshire’s pre-historical past and information about the various different eras in the Earth's history. Words like Jurassic and Pre-Cambrian were clearly explained and illustrated. But with the text panels in store and the objects packed carefully in boxes where do I start?

All our collections are carefully packed away in many, many boxes.



Books, books, books...

When I first posed my question I presumed that we may have objects that might help answer it – stones that revealed that Bedford had been under the sea, or a tropical forest, or whatever the truth turns out to be. But I also needed context and I was first handed a book that could provide that. Museums are stores for all kinds of things and we have books that are some of the first written on geology and archaeology, which in themselves could offer a fascinating insight into how our understanding has changed over the past 150 years or so. Thankfully, this book, ‘Digging up the Ice Age’ was published in 2009 by the University of Birmingham and gave me an very readable and up-to-date introduction to the subject. Technology and industry have made the last 30 years a period of great advancement in what we know about the earth and that that advancement continues at pace: scientific understanding is based on what we know today and can often be changed by what we find out tomorrow. One fascinating aspect of this advancement was that it wasn't only technology that was the cause but it had also come from the way geologists and companies who extract gravel have learnt to work together.

There is so much to absorb about the different causes of climate change: from continental drift, with England crashing into Scotland millennia ago while moving from somewhere low in the Southern Hemisphere on its way past the equator up to its present position relatively high up in the Northern Hemisphere; the variations in the earths orbit around the sun, or the tilt of its axis; the balance of life and death producing different gases into the atmosphere; and ‘positive acceleration’ where a frozen landscape, being white and icy reflects the sun’s rays and makes it colder still (or vice versa). Distilling all this into a simple answer can make your head spin. We think of the Ice age as one period of time but in fact the have been many ice ages "The" ice age is really just the last one (on which there'll be more next week).

A Bedfordian standing on Bedford soil.

So the ground beneath a Bedfordian's feet has covered most latitudes between the south pole and its present spot and survived numerous ice ages and warmer periods. But what was happening above this moving landscape? A clearer picture of the local environment's changes over the millenia came from the Bedfordshire Geology Group who will be helping us with our new displays. They have a very helpful map here that shows the different layers of rock across the length of the county. During the Jurassic period (150-200 million years ago) tropical seas covered Bedfordshire and were variously shallow and warm or deep and cold containing the smallest of life forms to huge reptiles. The clay that formed at the bed of that sea is at the surface in north Bedfordshire but deep beneath the chalk escarpments and other layers of rock by the time you get to Dunstable, which in itself revels something else - the erosion of the landscape due to glaciation and the melting of the glaciers.

And then Liz says “Have you looked at pollen?” and a whole other possible direction of how the climate of our town has changed has opened up before I have even got to any objects! It's certainly going to be fascinating to see how the experts put all this together and pull out the story of Bedford's Geological past for our new displays.

Kristian Purcell,

Curatorial Assistant