In a change to the advertised programme, the November meeting welcomed Dr. Mark Carroll from Epping to talk about ‘Life and Death in the Workhouse’, as reflected in his family history researches.
After the Dissolution of the Monasteries, the responsibility for looking after the poor was transferred to the local parishes, with the first Poor Law being passed in 1606. In 1834, a new Poor Law required local parishes to form Unions and provide a centralised facility for the area. Thus began the building of the large Victorian Workhouses, as immortalised in Dicken’s writing. In researching family history, it tends to be the Death Certificates that indicate someone was in the Workhouse and then, if Admission Registers are available, you can gain an understanding of how often a person was resident or duration of stay. The Death Certificate gives useful information on age, place of death and cause of death – with descriptions ranging from Doctors formal medical terms to a Managers pragmatic ‘Decay of Nature’. Dr Carroll mentioned three Workhouses that his researches touched on, each with their own facet of understanding. Leytonstone Workhouse was renamed Central Home Leytonstone to counter the stigma of the workhouse branding and in 1926 was costing about £100,000 pa to the local rate payers. At Haverhill in Suffolk, the Risbridge Poor Law Union straddled the Essex/ Suffolk boundary and a search result was initially ignored as he was expecting a London or South Essex location and not Suffolk. He eventually found a connection of a married daughter living in a village close to the workhouse in question. His final workhouse was at Stanway near Colchester where the daughter of the Workhouse Manager wrote of her memories of growing up in the building, with details of the routines and meals. An interesting talk and showing a different perspective of the Workhouse system that can become of interest when researching family history. …………………………………………………………. Quentin Spear Please Note: There are no meetings of the History Society in January or February.
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The October Zoom meeting saw Quentin Spear give an overview of the Official War Artists Scheme and a look at the work of Eric Ravillious. Started in 1916 to provide non photographic illustrations for overseas war propaganda articles, a sceptical War Office allowed 2 artists to be on the Western Front at any one time. Muirhead Bone was the first artist appointed and his pencil sketch of a tank in action was a major success. Followed by Francis Dodd doing portraits of senior officers and Eric Kennington sketching ‘Tommies’ in the field, the scheme gradually developed to engage artists with various styles and techniques whose work was reproduced and exhibited. The end of the war saw the accumulated pictures handed over to the newly established Imperial War Museum. When WW2 started, Sir Kenneth Clark (head of the National Gallery) lobbied for artists to be ‘used and not killed’, resulting in him chairing the War Artists Advisory Committee (WAAC), who appointed artists to the services. This time the Army initially had four artists appointed – Edward Ardizzone, Edward Bawden, Reginald Eaves and Barnet Freeman. The Navy chose Muirhead Bone, but other appointments soon followed, including other former WW1 artists Eric Kennington and Paul Nash. By the end of the war the WAAC had 5570 paintings/sketches and this time the IWM only took a representative sample of them, allowing other museums and provincial art galleries to have sets. There was then a 30 year gap in commissioning work until a request to cover aspects of Northern Ireland (1972), Falklands War (1983 with Linda Kitson), Iraq (1991), Bosnia (1993), and Afghanistan (2016). For local connections, three artists were mentioned. Henry Moore at Perry Green with his London Underground Blitz shelter’s; Edward Bawden of Great Bardfield who covered the Phony War in France and Dunkirk, Middle East and Italy; Eric Ravillious of Great Bardfield/Castle Heddingham. Ravillious was raised in Eastbourne before getting scholarships to Eastbourne Art College and then Royal College of Art in 1922 and becoming a known upcoming artist before WW2. He was commissioned as a War Artist in 1940 and initially worked on Naval subjects at Chatham and Sheerness, Grimsby, Norway Campaign. He had time off to complete a set of lithograph prints on Submarines, having visited the training establishment HMS Dolphin at Gosport. Following this he requested work closer to home as his wife Tirzah Garwood was ill, this resulted in him being based at RAF Sawbridgeworth in 1942. Here he painted the planes, hut interiors and the Pigeon Loft. A painting of a training session ‘Demonstrating a Machine Gun’ was left unfinished due to a posting to Iceland. The day after arriving, he went up on a patrol looking for a missing plane, only for his plane to become another casualty and Ravillious was the first of three Official War Artists to die in WW2, on 2 September 1942. The Fry Gallery at Saffron Waldon has an extensive archive of his work. For our next face to face meeting at the URC Church Hall in Hatfield Heath is on Tuesday 14th December at 7.30pm. Quentin Spear |
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