Battle of Britain and the Blitz Summer 1940
Crossposted from our sister blog WW2 Home Front Diaries https://ww2homefrontdiaries.wordpress.com
Posted by Mark Norris, World War Zoo Gardens project, Newquay Zoo.
Photo: believed to be the diarist Peggy Jane Skinner c. 1943 and her 1943 Diary.
A dramatic Battle of Britain style poster design 1941 by two young Benenden School students evacuated to Newquay (remembered in a plaque in the Hotel Bristol) – Zoo collection
Today is Battle of Britain Day, a day to remember all those involved in the months of aerial combat, the air crew, the in summer 1940, the pilots, ground crew, the casualties and their families.
“On Sunday, 15 September 1940, the German Luftwaffe launched its largest and most concentrated attack against London in the hope of drawing out the RAF into a battle of annihilation. Around 1,500 aircraft took part in the air battles which lasted until dusk. The action was the climax of the Battle of Britain.” (Wikipedia source)
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_Britain_Day
You can read more about the Battle of Britain on our previous blogposts, including extracts from Peggy Skinner’s wartime 1940 diary:
https://ww2homefrontdiaries.wordpress.com/peggy-jane-skinners-july-1940-diary/
https://ww2homefrontdiaries.wordpress.com/peggy-jane-skinners-august-1940-diary/
https://ww2homefrontdiaries.wordpress.com/peggy-jane-skinners-september-1940-diary/
These posts are about the Battle of Britain:
https://worldwarzoogardener1939.wordpress.com/2010/01/24/bbc-widget/
Several Kew Gardens and London Zoo staff served with the RAF, including several who died in training or on active service.
Battle of Britain Day Remembered 79 years on. 1940 / 2019.
Blog posted by Mark Norris, World War Zoo Gardens project, 2019
The Battle Of Britain in miniature for a wartime boy? A beautiful wartime handmade wooden Spitfire toy, in our World War Zoo Gardens Collection at Newquay Zoo.
On 10 July 1940, the Battle of Britain began.
Running from the 10th July to 31 October 1940, the Royal Air Force defended the U.K’s towns, coasts and airfields against a large-scale air attack by Nazi Germany.
2018 also marks the 100th anniversary of the RAF being formed out of the Royal Flying Corps in 1918.
Considered as the first major military campaign fought entirely by air forces, Nazi Germany sought to force Britain into a peace agreement, to disrupt the country’s war supply production and to demoralise the population by bombing.
“Let your shopping help our shipping” was one propaganda message about saving food – grow your own is another, promoted by a typical piece of advertising from a wartime gardening magazine (from the World War Zoo gardening collection / archive at Newquay Zoo).
One such attack was on Falmouth Docks on 10 July 1940, around 3pm when ten docks and Merchant Navy staff were killed. Many more were injured.
Quite often when I have been in the Falmouth area on this date, maroons or sirens are sounded mid afternoon around 3pm on 10th July to mark this sad event.
Charles Pears (1873 -1958), painting “The Bombing of The British Chancellor 10 July 1940”, signed, oil on canvas, a large painting at 80 x 125 cms and presented by the Falmouth Harbour Commission, 1993. Copyright: Falmouth Art Gallery www.falmouthartgallery.com
The event is remembered in the dramatic painting by Charles Pears, which once hung in the Docks Office and now hangs in Falmouth Art Gallery:
Local civilians killed on board SS British Chancellor or at Falmouth docks, 10 July 1940
George Eric Bastian, aged 40 from Mabe
Walter Samuel Knott, 48, Falmouth
Charles Palin from Falmouth
Henry Arthur Pellow, aged 40 from Falmouth
Samuel Prouse, aged 64
Leonard John Tallack of Mylor
Merchant Navy crew of SS British Chancellor, mostly buried in Falmouth Cemetery:
3rd Engineering Officer John Carr, 26 (buried in Sunderland)
2nd Engineering Officer William Joseph Crocker, 36 (of Portsmouth)
Chief Engineering Officer Charles Halley Lennox, 56 (of Glasgow)
3rd Engineering Officer Philip George Lucas Samuels, 26
Further family information on CWGC.org records can be found for most of these men.
These men would be numbered amongst 40 000 civilians killed over the course of the Battle of Britain campaign from 10th July to 31 October 1940.
How does this link with the World War Zoo gardens project at Newquay Zoo?
The need for Britain to grow its own secure food supply as part of the “Dig For Victory” campaign was never more vital once docks and merchant shipping were under regular attack by plane and submarine. This food security issue is one of the things that the World War Zoo gardens project was created to mark and remember, along with the loss in WW2 of zoo and botanic gardens staff including some who served and died with the RAF.
Interesting Infographic from the RAFBF about the Hardest Day 18th August 1940.
How is The Battle of Britain Remembered in Schools?
The Battle of Britain, Radar and the Blitz are still studied at primary school level in the new 2014 History curriculum, something we link with during our wartime zoo workshops.
Battle of Britain Day is officially remembered each year on 15 September 1940. A recent 2015 blogpost linked to some interesting schools and web resources:
St George and the wartime dragon, ready for St. George’s day this week – striking Battle of Britain imagery from Carmen Blacker and Joan Pring’s wartime design for Newquay War Weapons Week, 1941 whilst evcauted with Benenden school to Newquay. Copyright Newquay Zoo
On September 7th 1940, the London Blitz bombing began during the closing stages of the Battle of Britain. running on almost nightly until May 1941. London Zoo and Chessington Zoo amongst many other places did not escape bomb damage.
Further Blitz and Battle of Britain related blogposts from 2010 onwards:
and a 2010 post about another significant Battle of Britain date Adler Tag or Eagle Day 13 August 1940 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Adlertag
Blogposted on 10 July 1940 by Mark Norris, World War Zoo Gardens Project, Newquay Zoo.
This week sees the anniversary of the London Blitz affecting London Zoo, not just on the 26/27th September but for many anxious nights to come. Slowly press coverage and press releases trickled out, reassuring people that not much harm or damage had been done.
Our first report is from an Australian newspaper archive, itself reprinting a South African source? World news indeed!
LONDON ZOO BOMBINGS.
Animals’ Remarkable Escapes.
In London’s famous zoo elephants and monkeys, zebras and parrots have had remarkable escapes from indiscriminate Nazi bombing. The keepers (according to the “Cape Argus” Cape Town), have become amateur salvage men. The zoo suffered the disastrous effects of nearly 100 incendiaries and 14 other bombs recently, and while most of them fell either on paths or open spaces, a few hit buildings.
Monkey Hill, the ostrich and crane house, the restaurant, zebra house, aquarium, one of the aviaries and the antelope house have all been damaged. The aquarium keeper has been unofficially made foreman of the salvage gang. He has other keepers to help him. Jubilee and Jacky, the chimpanzees who were born at the zoo, are both still at the Zoo, with George and Chiney. They have been moved from the “chimp” house into the monkey house. So far the only animals which have escaped from the quarters through bombing are some monkeys and zebras and three humming birds.
There was great excitement the night a bomb fell on the zebra house. The building received a direct hit, and every one expected to find the animals dead. Not only were they alive and fit, but one ran a mile, as far as Gloucester Gate, with keepers in chase. One of the monkeys enjoyed a long spell of freedom. For three days it explored the Park, but towards the end of the third it returned to the Hill for food. There were about 30 monkeys set free by a hit scored on the Hill, but the keepers knew that if the animals were left alone they would soon return for food, and they did so. Although half a ton of concrete was blown over a parapet by the bomb, none of the monkeys was hurt. Fortunately, all the fish had been removed from the aquarium at the beginning of the war, so that none of them was hit when a bomb went through the roof.
Reprinted from The West Australian, Saturday 28 December 1940
http://trove.nla.gov.au/ndp/del/article/47300068
This magazine article in our collection is again a reprint of another paper – The Times – but with exclusive photographs for The War Illustrated magazine and makes interesting reading.
The zebra house shown is wrecked and its escaped zebra is ‘pictured’ later in our blog post in an unusual way, painted by a war artist.
“The Zoo is in fact a microcosm of London. Hitler’s bombs cause a certain amount of damage to it, and a considerable amount of inconvenience; but they have not destroyed the morale or the routine of its inhabitants, animal or human, and it continues to function with a very respectable degree of efficiency”
In our August blogpost on the August 1940 edition of Boy’s Own Paper, we mentioned an article by Sydney Moorhouse advertised for the following month on London Zoo and zoos at war, September 1940. The kind donation of this September issue to me from Norman Boyd, a fan of the zoo artist L.R. Brightwell means that I can now share this piece with you.
It should be read like The Times / The War Budget article on London Zoo’s blitz above as a reassuring bit of wartime propaganda in itself.
The Boy’s Own Paper account of zoos at war was published the month that London Zoo was blitzed but written well before September 1940.
London Zoo’s preparation for War can be seen in some photographs taken from their Animal and Zoo Magazine in November 1939 in their library and archive blog :
http://www.zsl.org/blogs/artefact-of-the-month/zsl-london-zoo-during-world-war-two
The wartime /mid 1940s map we have for London Zoo in our collection mentions the Camel House “as damaged by enemy action” but it’s still standing today!
When Zebras roamed Camden Town during the Blitz
One of the remarkable sights of wartime London in the 1940 Blitz was an escaped zebra during the London bombing raid of 26/27 September 1940.
There is an excellent personal account of it by London Zoo Director Julian Huxley in his memoirs and snippets of what the Blitz was like for zoo staff on duty:
One night about 11 o’clock we heard a stick of bombs exploding nearer and nearer to our shelter, until the last bomb shook the foundations of the building.
I put on my tin hat and went across the Zoo to find that five bombs had hit the grounds, the Zoo’s water main had been cut and the restaurant was burning …
Firemen soon turned up and I conducted them to the Sea Lion Pool, the only source of water left, which they nearly drained before the flames were under control …
taken from Julian Huxley, Memories. Julian Huxley was the Director of the Zoo at the time.
The incident has been remembered also in a painting by war artist Carel Weight, now in the Manchester City Art Gallery.
London Zoo area in the Bombsight.org ww2 website
The amazing Bombsight.org blitz map for 1940/41 also shows where bombs fell in and around the zoo, a website well worth exploring.
The Blitz on Britain’s cities and its zoos, remembered.
Posted by Mark Norris, World War Zoo Gardens Project, Newquay Zoo.
Spitfires over Truro: Trafalgar Roundabout, Cornwall. An impressive flight of two floral spitfires with turning propellers over a field of Poppies, planted by Truro’s Parks Department. The Pannier market nearby used to be a Spitfire and Hurricane ‘secret’ aeroplane part repair shop. Image Source: Mark Norris
Battle of Britain Day remembered 15 September 1940
“It is marvellous the way the RAF are adding to their cricket score. We put on the wireless at every news to hear how many more Jerries they’ve added to their score. Yesterday it was 180 for 34 of ours (from whom many pilots are safe). Since the beginning of the week excluding today they have brought down over 400.” Peggy Jane Skinner’s Schoolgirl diary, Friday 16 August 1940
The Battle Of Britain in miniature for a wartime boy! A beautiful wartime handmade wooden Spitfire toy, our other favourite suggestion for the wartime object collection on the BBC’s A History of The World, 2009/10. This very popular object is currently on display in our Tropical House display cabinet, c. 2015
The Battle of Britain now forms part of the New National Curriculum primary history unit, such as this interesting Year 6 unit from Cornwall Learning studied by many Cornish schools Inspire Curriculum Year 6 unit The Battle of Britain Bombs Battle and Bravery. 
The 75th anniversary year 2015 is being marked by many memorial events, especially around Battle of Britain Day 15 September 1940. Now commemorated as “Battle of Britain Day”, 15th September was the day people in Kent and London witnessed large battles between Fighter Command and the Luftwaffe. German casualties were heavy, although not nearly as heavy as was claimed at the time.
There is an interesting Wikipedia entry on this other claimant to the “Hardest Day” (18th August is also cited as a very tough day): https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_Britain_Day
It’s interesting to see the Royal Mail Battle of Britain commemorative stamps , as we did a whole schools stamp project / blog (blending history and science) with RZSS Edinburgh Zoo on Darwin and the Victorians through stamps 2009.
Royal Mail’s recent Battle of Britain tribute stamps 2015
The Battle of Britain and Blitz seen through a teenager’s diary, Summer 1940 My collection of mostly civilian WW2 wartime diaries is the source for many blogposts and anecdotes for teaching our wartime zoo history workshops.
Amongst my favourite is that of teenager Peggy Skinner (1924-2011). Peggy was a London schoolgirl who was studying in Glasgow as her engineer father was on war work there, probably in the Hillington Rolls Royce or other Clydeside war-related engineering works). We wrote about her in the past on what would have been her 90th Birthday in 2014: https://worldwarzoogardener1939.wordpress.com/2014/12/20/happy-90th-birthday-peggy-jane-skinner
Peggy Jane Skinner’s 1943 diary and a photo believed to be her. Source: Mark Norris, WWZG collection.
Here in a new selection of diary entries from her Letts Schoolgirl Diary 1940, Peggy recalls the bombing in Glasgow / Clydeside and the air battles down South over Surrey and London, where the rest of her family live. I have included some of my research in the Editor’s Notes on what is happening in the diary and the wider war. I have put these dairy entries online to be available to teachers and students; Copyright remains with the Mark Norris /World War Zoo Gardens collection if you quote from or publish these elsewhere. Please contact me via the comments form if necessary.
Peggy Skinner’s diary , Renfrew, Glasgow 1940 Tuesday 11th June 1940 – Nice early on today but very cloudy and dull later on. The news is very black now with I [Italy] against us, but we’ll win.
Saturday 13th July 1940 – Lovely afternoon but raining this morning. I went to tennis this afternoon, had one game a singles with Bunty. An air raid warning last night which I slept through, this is the second we’d had.
Sunday 14th July 1940– Went to church this morning, a terrible lot of people came in late. I went for a walk this afternoon right round the factories.[2] Editor’s Note: ‘factories’ – Hillington, to the southeast of Peggy’s house, was home to an industrial estate built in the late 1930s, including the Rolls Royce aero engine factories, protected by Anti-Aircraft (AA) batteries on Renfrew golf course. This area was bombed again on 24th July 1940.
Friday 19th July 1940– A bomb was dropped in Yoker which hit a tenement and killed five people (three of them children) and injured a lot of others, and one was dropped in Hillington this morning. No warning was given but the aeroplane and bombs were heard. Editor’s note: The Yoker bombing is widely covered on various Glasgow blitz websites.
Saturday 20th July 1940– Went to Ninotchka this afternoon with Bunty. It was very funny in parts but it was inclined to be sloppy. We had an air raid last night I slept during [it], time bombs were dropped, but woke up later on.
Tuesday 23rd July 1940– Had a raid warning just after dinner time, lasted about an hour. Nothing happened, very disappointing.
Wednesday 24th July 1940 – I was woken this morning about 6 o’clock because bombs were being dropped and there was a lot of noise from A-A guns. Factories at Hillington hit. No warning.
Thursday 25th July 1940 – Went with Bunty to see damage done at Industrial Estate. Not much at all, one factory or block of factories pretty badly damaged, nothing else except broken windows.
Saturday 10th August 1940 – Rotten day, very windy tonight. Finished giving book-case first coat of paint, barely enough. Played table tennis at Bunty in afternoon. Editor’s Note: What was to become known as ‘The Battle of Britain’ was beginning far to the south above the skies of Peggy’s family and old home area of Surrey on this date.
Friday 16th August 1940 – We listened to Haw-Haw, just as he said Britain never attacked he suddenly closed down, just as though the RAF had decided to pay him a visit.
[Additional note in Memoranda section:] It is marvellous the way the RAF are adding to their cricket score. We put on the wireless at every news to hear how many more Jerries they’ve added to their score. Yesterday it was 180 for 34 of ours (from whom many pilots are safe). Since the beginning of the week excluding today they have brought down over 400.
Editor’s note: German propaganda radio such as William Joyce (‘Lord Haw Haw’) was broadcast from major cities like Berlin or Hamburg and often shut down when an RAF air raid was in progress in order to avoid the planes homing in radio signals to find the cities – a form of radio blackout – see Roger Moorhouse, Berlin at War 1939-1945. It’s interesting too how Peggy picks up what seems today slightly callous but then popular, media approach of sporting ‘scores’ of planes and lives lost, still represented in the modern infographic (below).
Sunday 18th August 1940 – Went to church, saw all the soldiers marching down both from Renfrew and from Moor Park afterwards. Lot more raids along the South Coast.
Editor’s note: These south coast raids and next day’s German losses are during what is often called the ‘Hardest Da’y of the ‘Battle of Britain’ 18th August 1940 – see inforgraphic below for 18th August 1940.
Monday 19th August 1940 – Quite a nice day, though chilly towards evening. 140 Jerries brought down yesterday. Walk in evening.
Friday 6th September 1940 – Air Raid Practice yesterday, fire drill today. Played table tennis at Bunty’s tonight. Latin was terribly boring. Made an awful lot of smells in Chem.
Editor’s Note: Air Raid practice for Peggy and her classmates was timely as down South on September 7th 1940, the London Blitz bombing began. From September 1940 to May 1941 40,000 civilians were killed out of the overall 65,000 civilian casualties.
By 27th September, Mrs Skinner is thinking of asking Peggy’s cousins or young relatives up to the relative safety of Glasgow. The bombing of Glasgow continued but the devastating Clydebank Blitz was not to take place until March 1941; sadly we don’t have another of Peggy’s Diaries until 1943.
Sunday 15th September 1940 – Communion, Bible class, evensong. Was round [church] hall this evening when sirens went so I just had to trot home. Warning didn’t last long.
Thursday 19th September 1940 – There have been two short raid warnings so far this evening. There was a lot of gun-fire and we think some bombs dropped as we had to get up last night although there was no warning. Four warnings night before last.
Editor’s Note: The 18th September marked, according to some, the first serious night raid on Glasgow, destroying a building in Royal Exchange Square and setting fire to a cruiser in Yorkhill docks. The nearby Yorkhill hospital had to be evacuated. http://yoker.eveningtimes.co.uk/area/the-dark-days-of-world-war-two.html
Friday 27th September 1940 – An awful lot of planes have been brought down today, over 120 so far, I hope it goes past the 200 mark by tomorrow. Mum is thinking of asking Peter and Madge up. Peggy’s diary (which I am currentlyediting) gives a little glimpse of the civilian experience of the air raids. Peggy went on to work after graduation from Glasgow University in 1944 at RAE Farnborough aircraft research on radio and electronics.
A WW2 fundraising Spitfire clip or pin badge for your lapel. Made of metal, this is possibly the smallest item in our World War Zoo Gardens collection (Image source: Mark Norris)
Somebody mentioned to me that similar fundraising Spitfire lapel pins are still made from real Spitfire metal “crafted of Duralumin originating from Spitfire X4276” http://www.poppyshop.org.uk/spitfire-x4276-lapel-pin.html
Flying over the skies of London by day and night, the Battle of Britain and the Blitz affected the life of many in the South. London Zoo, Chessington Zoo, Kew Gardens and the London museums were amongst some of the venues affected by the 1940/41 Blitz.
In future blogposts this autumn we will update what happened to these venues in the Blitz and WW2. https://worldwarzoogardener1939.wordpress.com/2015/09/07/remembering-the-start-of-the-blitz-7-september-1940-and-a-happy-new-school-term/
Battle of Britain Day remembered 15 September 1940
Modern 2015 infographic of 18th August dubbed the “Hardest Day” Source: RAF Benevolent Fund. Compare to Peggy Skinner’s cricketing scores dairy entry for Friday 16 August 1940.
Further Battle of Britain sources:
Posted by Mark Norris, World War Zoo Gardens project, Newquay Zoo.
Which wartime pill box has the nicest view in Britain? Is it the one nestling amongst the coastal gardens on St Michael's Mount in Cornwall?
Since the anniversary of Eagle Day (Adlertag on 13 August 1940), you cannot fail to have noticed some of the commemoration and coverage of the Battle of Britain and the Blitz on British cities 70 years ago. The 15th of September, known as Battle of Britain Day, saw a corresponding rise in readership of our blog, 80 readers on that day alone has taken us well past 8000 + readers. By the 26th October we will have reached 10,000 readers plus, since we started writing about our wartime garden project blog just over a year ago.
Kite men soaring over wartime pill boxes, above the beach and cafe, Sennen Cove near Lands End, Cornwall, September 2010. One pill box is easy to spot on the cliff top. Can you see the other 'killer' one tucked away further down the cliff? (World War Zoo gardens, Newquay Zoo).
So forgive me, regular readers. It is over 6 weeks since my last confession or blog on the World War zoo garden project at Newquay Zoo. We’ve another bumper blog edition for you. However we know you will have been kept busy in the garden or watching the coverage of the many interesting wartime anniversaries in September and November.
There have been parades, newspaper supplements and interviews, along with the BBC Blitz and Battle of Britain seasons www.bbc.co.uk/blitz including the documentary Spitfire Women (about the Air Transport Auxiliary) and a very moving dramatization of Geoff Wellum’s First Light, his coming of age Spitfire memoir. I didn’t realize that Mr. Wellum lives in the local area, pictured in the newspapers with Mullion Cove and parts of Cornwall in the background. I’ve been privileged to meet a few Spitfire pilots in the past, including my former school headmaster D.G.S. Akers, now long retired. We’ve also had the Battle of Britain memorial flight pass over the zoo during penguin feeding time (just after the Eclipse in 1999, I think). The penguins were quite fascinated by these graceful ladies passing low overhead! I’ve also chatted this month over the wartime garden fence a member of the Spitfire Society, who was visiting the zoo. He was interested in the schools workshops and pack we are preparing for 2011/12; the Spitfire Society are looking forward to working with schools and have some sponsorship from Airfix http://www.airfix.com (Recent ads in the BBC History magazine show that you too can own and fly the Battle of Britain Memorial Flight in miniature, in plastic, on string above your head at home – with proceeds to forces charities, to boot!)
Parts of my leave from the wartime garden and Newquay Zoo took me around the West and South Coast of Cornwall. Having been working on the wartime garden project for almost two years now, it is hard to escape little reminders of wartime life, even on family days out. Knowing a little more now how real the fear or threat of invasion was in 1940, you catch glimpses of this fear on your travels. A pill box at St. Michael’s Mount, nestling at the base of this amazing National Trust castle, camouflaged amongst the rocks. A seaside beach at Sennen or Loe Bar or Dawlish still watched over by its little wartime concrete castle. We’ll include in our next few blogs a few more local photographs of the subtle traces or ‘ghostmarks’ of wartime (as Kenneth Helphand calls them in Defiant Gardens).
It has become noticeably Autumn in the wartime garden. Newquay Zoo has been busy with the last of the season holiday makers, mixed in with the arrival of lots of new faces amongst students to study zoology, conservation and animal care from Cornwall College Newquay www.cornwall.ac.uk/newquay and Treviglas Community College.
A late Indian Summer in late September and early October looked promising for the last of the growing season. Like many zoo and tourism business staff, we take our well-earned ‘summer break’ as soon as the school holidays are over. We have all mostly been lucky with the weather, but the garden has suffered in the last few weeks from frost and wet. Warm September and October days with cloudless skies come with a cost.
October frost finished the last of our tomatoes, so close to ripening. World War Zoo gardens, Newquay Zoo
The beautiful clear sunny days have been paid for alas with cold, clear, starry nights. That fresh, sharp morning chill (not unpleasant) of the first Autumn weeks of the school term has come at a price. Many of the wartime gardening books acknowledge that growing tomatoes outside in Britain without a greenhouse is always a gamble. We lost to frost again this year!
Gnome guard (LDV) watching over late strawberry flowers at Newquay Zoo's World War Zoo Wartime garden
Our tomatoes which had showed signs of blight and leaf blotching from some early October rain showers have been finished off by mild frost damage just as they were ripening in the last few days before half term and the strangeness of Halloween preparations. Sunday 24th October saw these tomatoes sadly dug up and added to the compost heap behind the Lion House. Many were annoyingly close to ripening. If this was wartime, this would be a serious setback. Let’s hope our late strawberries don’t go the same way!
Ripening Strawberries on their bed of straw, World War Zoo gardens project, Newquay Zoo.
Our ‘straw-berries’ are bedded down on handfuls of straw to protect them. Straw has also been used for a slightly more comic or sinister purpose around the zoo over half term. We didn’t grow pumpkins or gourds this year as we don’t have the space in our wartime plot. Next year we might enter a Land girl with pumpkin head into the zoo’s scarecrow festival competition this half term , but this year we’re too busy seed collecting and planting! There are some great scarecrow examples from different zoo sections to look out for and vote for, if you’re visiting Newquay Zoo over the Halloween half term. There are even some wartime animal ghost stories to fing on our halloween trail.
Alternatively, pop in to the National Trust’s Trengwainton Gardens near Penzance to see their scarecrow festival in their beautifully restored working kitchen gardens. They have a Land girl and Hitler scarecrow on their “dig for victory” garden plot on the Trengwainton community allotments, run by Paul Bonnington. We look forward to working with Trengwainton and others on the World War Zoo project in future.
My last day before leave was spent writing my last blog entry, tidying and watering the wartime garden plot and sowing green manure. I sowed some of the last crops of the season to give us winter and Spring veg, wartime varieties of Spring lettuce and cabbage such as Durham, Flower of Spring and Offenham Early . (The onions are all that is left to plant out now).
Green manure crop, World War Zoo garden, Newquay Zoo, Autumn 2010
On my return from pottering around Cornwall for two weeks with the family, the organised weeds of our green manure mix (clover, mustard and others) were well established as ground cover and weed suppressant. Within another month by mid November, we shall be able to dig this crop into the ground to rot down throughout the month of December. This should boost our fairly poor slaty, stony clay zoo soil ready for fresh planting in the New Year. One of my new students misread the plant label as “Green manure crap” instead of “crop”. In a strange way, he’s not far wrong in what the zoo soil needs. In addition to the green manure, we do get a fair soil boost from our zoo compost heaps, with some animal bedding and hoofstock dung, leaves, grass and plant clippings of our compost heaps. There’s a good quick chirpy little video clip with Chris Collins (the Blue Peter gardener) about green manure on the BBC Dig In Campaign website: http://bbc.co.uk/digin Only days after pulling out the last of the pea and broad bean haulm (stems) did I read wartime Smallholder magazine advice about digging the steams and roots back in to rot down!
Our BBC Dig In carrots are topping out nicely, protected from carrot root fly by a thick grassy swathe of chives. The BBC Dig In Dwarf French beans didn’t look too good once the Black Swan had explored them but some seed pods might still be saved for seed next year. Our Australian Black Swan on its free-ranging strolls around the zoo is attracted to the garden’s location at the Lion House lawn area by the windfall crab apples from nearby trees. Black Swans can now be added to our list of unusual garden pests, alongside peacocks.
Leek seeds and bees, August 2010, World War Zoo gardens Newquay Zoo
Seed saving, a wartime necessity, has seen a good crop of Broad Beans drying out alongside paper envelopes of sunflower seeds and a small crop of Runner Beans from a trip to Heligan, bought from their surplus heritage veg produce for sale. About a dozen strange Afro-haircut headed leek seed heads are drying slowly on their plants, the last of 2009’s leeks from some spare seedlings from Tregew farm shop near Flushing, Falmouth. Wartime gardening books have some timely advice on seed saving, as do the Real Seed Company. It’s a subject surprisingly not seen or covered much of late in gardening magazines, despite recession thrift and Alys Fowler’s Thrifty Garden.
Thrift and improvisation were the watchword of many a wartime gardener and wartime zoo keeper. The hard frost and snow earlier this year has bought on a bumper crop of acorns from the oaks overshadowing my home garden and kind neighbours leave basketfuls on my doorstep. Before you send anymore, I now have a couple of sacks full, enough for autumn and winter. One young lad kindly send us an envelope full of acorns to say thank you for his Junior Keeper day.
Acorns provide useful enrichment for some foraging animals such as our rare Philippine Warty Pigs, but are not the widespread food for all that they once proved in wartime. From providing German ersatz acorn coffee to feeding many people during the Dutch hunger winter of 1944, acorns also proved helpful to bridge the animal foodstuff gap early on in British wartime zoos. Reminiscent of the scrap drives for iron railings and Aluminium saucepans for Spitfires by Lord Beaverbrook, the secretary of ZSL London Zoo Julian Huxley put out a broadcast appeal for acorns in Autumn 1939:
“Many children in the country have done their part to help feed the Zoo animals by collecting acorns. Acorns are an excellent feed for agoutis, squirrels, monkeys, deer, and even pheasants like them. Beech mast, so often left to waste on the ground in beechy counties like Bucks, also makes a fine food and it is surprising how helpful such emergency rations have proved.”
Quoted from The Zoos in War article by Margaret Shaw, Animal and Zoo magazine, November 1939 (copy in Newquay Zoo archive).
Julian Huxley reported the public response a month later in the News from the Zoos section of the December 1939 issue of Animal and Zoo magazine:
Acorns for the Camels – December 1939
“Acorns have been pouring into the London Zoo at a rate of a ton a week ever since a broadcast appeal was made for them. They arrive in sacks, parcels, shopping bags and even the canvas sacks used by banks to store coins. One of the overseers told me that most animals have the sense to know when they’ve had enough acorns. For, of course, acorns are only a supplementary diet, and these sent in to the Zoo are being saved to offer the animals as a little luxury to supplement the rather restricted diet of wartime.”
“The elder of the two Bactrian camels, George, loved his treat of acorns and munches them up with great gusto. Not so Wally. Wally was born at Whipsnade and is quite a youngster compared to his companion. He simply refuses to look at them. In the Rodent House many of the burrowing animals are busy hiding them away in the straw. Every one has enjoyed helping the Zoo by gathering these acorns. I heard an amusing story from a member of the Zoo’s staff whose mother has been evacuated to Devonshire, where she is staying on a farm. She wrote a plaintive letter with her consignment, saying that the competition was so great among the farm animals and herself that she had to stay at the window waiting for a breeze to dislodge a single acorn. Then there was the concerted rush of twenty pigs, ten cows and herself to pick up the fallen nut.” (December 1939)
A fine hat on display in our Zoo News 'World War Zoo' article on display at the wartime garden, Newquay Zoo.
Speaking of zoo and animal magazines, the World War Zoo project features in a double page article with photos in Zoo News, the thrice-yearly members’ magazine of Living Coasts, Newquay and Paignton zoos (all part of the Whitley Wildlife Conservation Trust). Newquay Zoo members have already popped in to laugh about my ‘daft hat’. (Thanks). Hats and headgear are one of the few areas of ‘un-uniform’ that zoo staff are usually allowed. However, this was not always the rule. Fellow local zoo historian and Bartlett Society member Neil Thomas-Childs in some of his kind library searches for the World War Zoo project told me as an aside that London Zoo created their famous ZSL cap badge as the standard badge for its famous peaked caps directly after the First World War. This was as a result of keepers returning from the forces doggedly wearing their old regimental cap badges. This strange peace dividend went on, according to ex London Zoo staff at Newquay Zoo, right up to the late 1980s when the peaked cap were phased out. One day maybe our peaked keeper caps will return … and the lion shall lie down with the lamb.
For our next wartime garden blog article in early November, we’ll be returning to London Zoo amongst others, in time for Armistice and Remembrance Sunday. We will be observing the two minute’s silence and holding a small display of our project’s wartime gardening and home front memorabilia at Newquay Zoo on Remembrance Sunday, the 14th November 2010. Part of the wartime garden’s role is as a living memorial to the wartime generation, along with a couple of stories from the few war memorials to zoo staff we have so far discovered. The scale of the ‘sacrifice’ is still difficult to comprehend.
War memorials and poppies aside, we have in our November blog a couple more examples of the wartime “time safari” around your neighbourhood, which may be of interest to primary and history teachers. (A similar “Victorian time safari” is sometimes featured on our sister blog, http://darwin200stampzoo.wordpress.com). We also hope to have some more cheerful news, fingers crossed, from the BIAZA zoo awards at Paignton Zoo in early November of whether the World War Zoo gardens project has received an award commendation in its first year.
It’s poppy time again (see blogroll links for the Royal British Legion website). Zoo staff and the wartime garden will be proudly wearing their poppies, although keepers don’t wear them whilst working as pins, poppies and grasping animal paws don’t mix.
Finally, the BBC’s landmark Radio 4 series A History of the World in 100 Objects with the British Museum has come to an end this week with object No. 100: a solar mobile phone and lamp charger, not unlike Newquay Zoo’s bank of solar water heating and electricity generating panels. You can find out about our World War Zoo gardens project offerings to the BBC’s online museum (a handmade wooden spitfire toy and wooden handmade sliding puzzle) in the Cornwall, 1940s or wartime section (see our blogroll links). Enough objects to keep you busy browsing until our next blog offering.
Fowey Town Hall, Salute The Soldier week plaque awarded to Fowey, Cornwall 1944 (Image from World War Zoo garden, Newquay Zoo)
7th September 2010 sees the official anniversary of the 1940 Blitz on British cities, especially London, as Luftwaffe tactics in the Battle of Britain changed from bombing airfields to civilian targets. (Falmouth saw civilian bombing in July 1940 – see earlier blog entries).
A poignant little diary by a young female London Post Office worker in the zoo archive lists “1941 5th January, 2nd Great Fire of London Blazes all around. Cornwall House hit Hilda will not have to go to work” . Amongst many other routine air raid entries and cinema listings of films seen, we have similar entries for a 1944 London diary about the flying bomb blitz.
Lots of blitz coverage on the BBC at present www.bbc.co.uk/the blitz
This week sees the anniversary of the launch or rechristening of what became the Dig For Victory campaign on 10th September 1940, renamed from the less catchy National Growmore Campaign.
Robert Hudson, Minister of Agriculture (from May 1940 onwards) broadcast a BBC radio speech on 10 September 1940:
“We want not only the big man with the plough but the little man with the spade to get busy this autumn … Let Dig for Victory be the motto of everyone with a garden.”
(quoted in Jane Fearnley Whittingstall’s Ministry of Food book accompanying the IWM exhibition).
The Little Man with The Spade - unofficial logo for the National Growmore Campaign 1940, replaced by the iconic hobnail boot on spade image of the Dig for Victory campaign in 1941 Image from adverts in The Vegetable Garden Displayed, RHS (image from the World War Zoo gardens archive, Newquay Zoo)
This “little man with a spade” would often have been a woman, rarely featured in adverts or photos in gardening books of the time. Many women gardeners had to do make do with special interest columns such as “EXPLAINING THINGS – For the benefit of women who are doing their bit in the garden” in the Smallholder and Home Gardening Magazine. Both women and children often had their own special pages or columns (see last month’s August 1940 Boys Own paper blog article).
It would be 1941 before the iconic foot of Mr WH Mckie of Acton in London became the famous boot on spade of the Dig For Victory poster.
Several modern campaigns are underway this week – the start of the Prince of Wales’ Rainforest project development into START with rail journeys around the country encouraging citizens to do their bit for climate change http://www.startuk.org/
Clays Fertiliser advert back cover, The Vegetable Garden Explained, RHS (image from World War Zoo gardens archive, Newquay Zoo)
The zoo is a little quieter this week as schools go back, a different story from the busy Bank Holiday weekend here that saw our first birthday anniversary of the World War Zoo gardens project. The BBC Dig In campaign mentions the schools going back and we’re delighted to see the return of schools gardens schemes over the last few years. One of our intended publications in 2011/12 will be a Dig For Victory schools gardening pack for cross-curricular primary history work
http://www.bbc.co.uk/gardening/digin/
The last few Broad beans are now saved for seed. Our animals (especially our monkeys) will miss podding these fresh crops. The 2009 sown leeks are now in big flower seed heads awaiting an October seed harvest.
The next crop of BBC Dig In carrots is growing well along with BBC French beans. Winter hardy cabbage, lettuce and spinach are growing well from seedlings for early spring fresh greens. As the BBC Dig in site suggests, patches of bare earth that’s too late for catch crops is being sown with ‘green manure’ (buckwheat, clover etc) for a bit of extra soil fertility, ready for next year.
An early press version of the iconic boot on foot Dig For Victory poster (Smallholder and Home Gardener magazine, Oct 26, 1940) Image from the World War Zoo gardens collection, Newquay Zoo
We should soon have a permanent World War Zoo webpage on the Newquay Zoo website www.newquayzoo.org.uk keeping you posted on the next stages of the project. The page and blog also mentions the wartime experiences of our sister Zoo www.paigntonzoo.org.uk Paignton Zoo in Devon, a town now home to Sutton’s Seeds (based in wartime in Reading). Sutton’s seeds have a good grow your own blog, which is at www.suttons.co.uk Paignton Zoo’s gardens team led by Kevin Frediani have a request to local gardeners for sunflower seed heads as animal food.
Other sources of inspiration are the RHS / Wildlife Trust Wild About Gardening campaign (see blogroll www.rhs.org.uk).
The RHS also have a new Dig For Victory documentary DVD on sale, filling the gap until one day the BBC release the 90s series The Wartime Kitchen and Garden on DVD (please, someone at the BBC!) with Ruth Mott and the much missed Harry Dodson.
Advice for new women gardeners and the importance of wartime onions! Smallholder and Home Gardening magazine, Oct 26, 1940 (Image from World War Zoo gardens, Newquay Zoo).
Don’t forget the Imperial War Museum exhibition Ministry of Food (until Jan 2011) www.food.iwm.org.uk
We’re offline and around and about away from the zoo for two weeks before our next posting.
We’ll be keeping an eye out for any wartime connections or evidence, the equivalent to our Victorian Time Safari on our companion blog for pupils and teachers studying Darwin, postal history and the Victorians. Maybe this historical I-Spy may be another coastal pillbox or tucked away as I saw in Fowey Town Hall recently on an offsite animal encounter talk during the Fowey Royal Regatta for Newquay Zoo. There is a rare surviving (in- situ) example of a Salute the Soldier Week Campaign plaque awarded to the town to look out for.
Our stamp blog with RZSS is at http://darwin200stampzoo.wordpress.com
Whatever campaigns you’re inspired by, enjoy your gardening and if you miss us over the next few weeks, enjoy reading previous blog entries.
Happy birthday to our wartime vegetables!
Happy birthday to our wartime vegetables …
Appropriately for our first birthday week (the garden was officially launched to the public a year ago 2009 on the August Bank holiday), we have just topped our previous busiest day back in early Spring at 65 readers in a single day. This soon adds up to over 6770 readers so far in our first year, 63 posts and lots of lovely comments. We’ve put the gardens project and blog in for a national BIAZA zoo education award which we hear the result of in November 2010, fingers crossed.
I was talking last week about the wartime garden project and our progress with a planned book and wartime diary extracts from our archive with local Cornish author and maritime historian Elvin Carter. Elvin kindly popped back with a copy of his latest book for me to read, The Last Voyage of the Olivebank, being the 1939 grain race tall ship diaries of Len Townend (published by Blue Elvan books, UK ISBN 9780955995019). Elvin pointed out an unusual little epilogue at the back of this new companion volume to his 2008 book about the grain race sailor diaries of Geoffrey Sykes Robertshaw (Before The Mast, ISBN 0955995002). The grain races of 1938-39 are also famously described in Eric Newby’s book, The Last Grain Race. There’s more about each book at http://www.bookcase.co.uk/
Len Townend wrote as his final words (he died in 1998, aged 81):
“When the coal and oil supplies become exhausted (as in time they surely must) and if once again the great windships sail the seas (as they may) and if there is such a thing as reincarnation (and I am selfish enough to hope that there is) , then it would be my hope that I may reappear and for a time at least tramp around a capstan or take in a Royal on some black foul night with my old shipmates of yesteryear.”
"Let your shopping help our shipping" was one propaganda message about saving food - grow your own is another, promoted by a typical piece of advertising from a wartime gardening magazine (from the World War Zoo gardening collection / archive at Newquay Zoo).
The tragic events which befell the Olivebank in the early weeks of the war and the rest of Len Townend’s wartime Merchant Navy career illustrate how dependent Britain was on shipping and how vital the National Growmore Campaign or Grow Your Own movement was to become. 70 years ago this month, the latest version of “Dig For Victory” was launched as the Battle of Britain raged in the skies overhead. There is more about this topic in previous posts and at the excellent Ministry of Food exhibition at the Imperial War Museum London (until Jan 2011) – see links and blogroll for details.
People have been potting up seeds in newspaper pots at the zoo this week, just as before on our wartime garden weekends in May. Our wartime zoo trail is busy with zoo visitors as part of our plant hunters themed week at Newquay Zoo www.newquayzoo.org.uk
The garden is looking a little sparse as the broad beans are now saved for seed or happily peeled and eaten in their pods by monkeys.
Seed saving of beautiful flower heads of leeks, alive with bees and butterflies. World War Zoo gardens, Newquay Zoo
A new batch of seedlings are in the ground for the autumn.
You can read about the last year’s events on the past 63 posts available in our archive post section.
Happy Birthday, World War Zoo!
Bumper August holiday edition of the blog: The World War Zoo garden at Newquay Zoo celebrates its first anniversary on August 31st. Packed with extra reading and some fun things to do!
Happy National Allotments Week 9th – 15th August 2010 http://www.nsalg.org.uk
Wartime holiday reading - the dramatic front cover (The Altmark story) of Boy's Own Paper August 1940 Price 6d (Image from the World War Zoo collection, Newquay Zoo)
August, our first garden anniversary amid school holidays with Newquay Zoo www.newquayzoo.org.uk and busy local Cornish beaches, full of children and their families enjoying sunshine, picnics, animal feeding talks and each other’s company (along with the odd temper tantrum and family row). Many stop to look at the fresh veg, flowers and busy bees of the World War Zoo garden, soon to be celebrating its first anniversary at the end of August 2010. Sadly the cares of the office and family back home are never far away, judged by awkward mobile phone conversations.
Holidays in wartime were increasingly more of a ‘staycation’ variety, with ‘Is Your Journey Really Necessary?’ posters and petrol rationing, wired off and mined beaches with troops tensely awaiting invasion and Home Guards watching the shoreline from pillboxes, rather than today’s RNLI lifeguards.
Spot the pillbox on your Cornish summer holiday. Without camouflage now but still blends in well! Protecting the harbour at Porthleven in Cornwall still, 2010, 70 years on from construction at the height of invasion fears. (Image: World war Zoo gardens, Newquay Zoo)
Many of the older generation still loyally return to Cornwall where they were brought as children on family holidays or as evacuees. Newquay has recently seen another anniversary trip by staff and boys of Gresham’s School, 70 years on from the school, like Benenden Girls School, moving from the battlefields of the South Coast to Newquay and Cornwall. The holiday period of this time is vividly captured in Bettye Grey’s reprinted memoir of Newquay life, “Oh Get On!”
Fabulous adverts for childhood toys and boys' careers, August 1940 Boy's Own Paper (Image: World War Zoo gardens, Newquay Zoo)
Already in early August there must be children moaning “I’m bored!” to parents. What would a wartime school child do in their extended holidays, either in their evacuation centres or increasingly at home returned from evacuation billets when not much was happening in the ‘Phoney war’ and often with no schools to go to?
In a battered and yellowing copy of the Boy’s Own Paper for August 1940 in the Newquay Zoo World War Zoo gardens wartime life archive can be found the following rousing instructions from the Editor for young men (and their sisters):
“Be British [quoted as the last words of Captain Smith of the Titanic] and summon up your nerve and heart and sinew to carry on with your job – your harvesting, your waste-paper-collecting, the repairing of the school air raid shelters, black out blinds, fire service, first aid.”
“Write home often, and tell those anxious people how jolly all right you are; and let your whole being throb with the almighty unconquerable challenge –“Let them come!” Brace your muscles every time you think of it, let it resound from your spade when you give an extra hefty jab into the earth of the school garden plot. Let your nostrils dilate, your eyes kindle with a fierce gleam as, with fists clenched, you surge out that mighty challenge between set teeth. Go to it, lads!” (Editorial, Boy’s Own Paper, August 1940)
Never has gardening been so breathlessly described in such “ripping” terms. Another article begins:
“All of you who have a garden have, I know, been digging for victory, and now your crops are up you can see what can be done by hard work, and penny packets of seed. Every potato, parsnip, carrot, beetroot, every row of peas or beans, every lettuce or tomato on your plot of ground is going to help us win through, and what is more, it is your very own contribution to victory. Having dug for victory, I am now going to talk t you about feeding for victory. I don’t mean by this that you should sit down and eat up all your crops. I mean feeding livestock.”
“Why not keep one or two rabbits, a few chickens or half a dozen bantams? … and some have a large enough garden, perhaps to keep a pig, or there may be adjacent to the garden a rough piece of meadow or waste land to poor to grow crops but where a goat could pick up a living and provide you with milk … How ripping, too, if there was also honey for tea from your own bees … doubly welcomed now we are rationed with sugar …” (“Feeding For Victory”, Boy’s Own Paper, August 1940).
Gardening for Boys - Boy's Own Paper, August 1940 (Image: World War Zoo collection, Newquay Zoo)
Followed by W. E. Shewell-Cooper’s Garden and Allotment What You Can Do series, August’s article being ‘How To Get Good Garden Crops’:
“August is a harvesting month. It isn’t as big a harvesting month as September, of course, but there is lots of harvesting work to do. Take the French beans and runner beans, for instance …”
Not many years ago, there was a brief nostalgia flourish of the “Dangerous Book for Boys” genre and not-so-dangerous companion book for girls. Many journalists and childhood experts lamented the modern safety-obsessed, neglectful or over parenting of the ‘play safe, play at home, computer and text obsessed, short attention spanned, foul-mouthed, under-parented, disrespectful, drunk, promiscuous, overweight and more miserable generation’ of 21st century children and teenagers in Britain than anywhere else in the developed world. Many in Newquay have been fighting back recently against adverse publicity regarding this generation on holiday without parents for the first time.
My friend Sue Palmer, author of Toxic Childhood, Detoxing Childhood, and 21st Century Boys (all by Orion, see www.suepalmer.co.uk ) would no doubt approve of the vigorous and earnest pursuits suggested or sold to Boy’s Own Paper readers in the August 1940 edition.
There are plenty of activity ideas “for the growing boy” in the Boy’s Own Paper August 1940 (B.O.P Motto: Quicquid Agunt pueri nostri farrago libelli, or “Whatever boys do makes up the mixture of our little book”) for boy craft of days gone by. Amongst the rousing tales of daring-do and technical articles on “Submarines: what they are like and how they are operated” (at a time of rationing and increased Merchant shipping loss to Nazi U-boats) are some fascinating adverts.
More activity ideas and "knowledge for the growing boy", adverts page, Boy's Own Paper, August 1940 (Image: World War Zoo gardens, Newquay Zoo)
What boy could be bored, tempted by naval careers or radio officer training colleges (“A career of national importance in wartime with an assured future in peace-time”), Skywaymen of the BOP Flying League and their aircraft recognition card games, Cold Ovaltine “the best summer drink”, Brylcreem and discreet booklets on “Sex Problems … if you are puzzled about the secrets of birth” in “Knowledge for the Growing Boy” (6d, post free.)
What does the holiday weather matter as wartime boy when there is always the latest model anti-tank gun or make-it-yourself ship or plane models, photographic chemicals, stamp collecting advice care of Stanley Gibbons (in the centenary year of the Penny Black and Penny Post 6th May 1840), cricketing tips, pen pals seeking fellow “aviation enthusiast” or “cricket enthusiast”, explosive chemistry experiments, canoeing or cycling adventures (with blackout shielded headlamps, naturally). There were of course for some, visits to the local zoo, if it had reopened as a morale booster and a touch of normal pre-war life.
Battle of Britain in your hands for the growing wartime boy! Frog kits were the forerunner of postwar Airfix kits, and taught valuable craft skills and aircraft recognition - friend or foe - for young and old alike! (Image: World War Zoo collection, Newquay Zoo.)
Cold Ovaltine! The ultimate summer drink, showing lots of busy boy and tomboy sporting activities to fill the holidays, as advertised in August 1940, Boy's Own Paper (Image: World War Zoo collection, Newquay Zoo)
There was also the salvage of aluminium kitchen goods to collect and sort out, as part of COGS (Children on Government Salvage), during the July and August 1940 appeal by Lord Beaverbrook for saucepans for Spitfires! This campaign features comically in William at War, one of the Just William books reprinted in the 2009 “Still Naughty at Ninety” anniversary of Richmal Crompton’s boy wonder. Find more in the www.panmacmillan.com the A- Z author list.
The life of a 1940s boy (or tomboy girl) seems exhausting and busy by modern standards! Amongst many memoirs and histories of wartime children, Mike Brown has written a fabulous short Shire Library Book on Wartime Childhood www.shirebooks.co.uk which illustrates the varied activities, challenges and opportunities of my parent’s childhood. Two of our handmade wartime toys – a Spitfire and a wooden sliding puzzle – from the Newquay Zoo wartime life collection can be found on the BBC www.bbc.co.uk/ahistoryoftheworld
If you want to recapture some of this indoor childhood activity, Airfix are very proudly advertising their kits again through http://www.airfix.com/ in the pages of BBC History Magazine http://www.bbchistorymagazine.com/ including an anniversary Battle of Britain range and RAF airfield (just like the one my granddad served on) with proceeds to veterans’ charities. The Airfix Club flies again for a whole new generation of paint-splattered boys and girls!
Setting up our World War Zoo display in the Grow Your Own allotment section of Trelawney Garden Centre, Wartime garden display on right, minibeasts being unpacked on the left.The lavender and Buddleia were alive with bees throughout! (Image: World War Zoo collection, Newquay Zoo)
So “get to it, lads” (and lasses) at your local garden centre! Newquay Zoo and its World War Zoo wartime gardens display were ‘on tour’ at the weekend of July 31st and August 1st, as guests of Trelawney Garden Centre at Sladesbridge near Wadebridge. We were very busy for two days showcasing wildlife friendly gardening, helped out by giant minibeasts from the Newquay Zoo collection, along with amazing phasmid leaf and stick insects from Kevin Roberts, Trelawney’s events manager, as an active member of the PSG Phasmid Study Group. http://www.trelawney.co.uk/wadebridge/index.htm
http://phasmid-study-group.org/
Hopefully some of these children might go on to join the AES Bugs Club, junior section of the Amateur Entomologists Society http://www.amentsoc.org/bug-club/
Amongst many welcome cups of tea from their friendly staff, we chatted to many hundreds of children and adults of all ages, from all over the country along with a puzzled elderly couple of Cornwall’s many German ‘garden tourists’. My German is a little ‘Rustig’, especially when it comes to explaining the wartime garden display, marginally better on insects, habitats and camouflage (‘Muster unt Tarnung’).
Gardening was also part of this manly (boyish or tomboyish) existence, amongst the columns of nature notes such as “The Wonders of Crab Life” by H. Chapman Pincher BSc, (surely not the controversial Spycatcher writer of later years?) – and “Through the Hedge and over the Downs” by ‘Hedgerow’. We saw lots of native wildlife such as bees, birds and dragonflies flitting and buzzing around Trelawney Garden Centre and its lakes (with rumours of kingfishers), amid many chats about our live insects, sloughed spider moults, wasp nest sections or dried specimens of Death’s Head Hawk moth. ‘Hedgerow’ notes topically for August 1940 “What to look out for this month: Hawk moth larvae; Privet Hawk on Privet: Eyed Hawk on willow, Lime Hawk on lime or elm, Elephant Hawk on Willow Herb. Dunlin or Ox birds by the seashore. Corn Buntings and yellowhammers by the Cornfields. Butcher Birds’ larders in the hedges. Teazles in Bloom. Wasps’ nests.” A refreshing sight for the sore limbs of many a Land Girl or Victory harvest schoolchild working in the August fields, but also sign of how Britain’s wildlife has changed in 70 years, If you haven’t signed it yet, sign up via www.signtheletter.org.uk to the RSPB’s Letter to The Future campaign www.rspb.org.uk
L.R. Brightwell's cheerful nature notes illustrations to Hedgerow's gnomes and gardens August 1940 column for the Boy's Own Paper. (Image: Newquay Zoo, World War Zoo collection)
This last Boy’s Own Paper article is quirkily illustrated by L.R. Brightwell, cartoonist and illustrator of many zoo and nature books (see our archive blog entries on his Story of London Zoo, August 2009). Our partner college Cornwall College Newquay www.cornwall.ac.uk/newquay , quiet without hundreds of degree students for a few weeks, has some original Brightwell paintings. There are several more in the care of the retired College manager and author Dr. Mike Kent, no doubt vigorously rambling around the Cornish countryside and coast path collecting materials for his modern hedgerow notes books about Cornwall http://www.alisonhodge.co.uk/ShowDetails.asp?id=125 We were interested to note and already tracking down in detective mode the mention of ‘Next Month! Look out for … Wartime and The Zoos by Sydney Moorhouse FRGS, illustrated by L.R. Brightwell, FZS” promised for Boy’s Own Paper, September 1940. When we track it down, we’ll share it with you on this blog.
“Children’s Gardens” by Edwin L. Howard (the Studio Publications, 2s. 6d.) is favourably reviewed by ‘Hedgerow’ in Boy’s Own Paper, August 1940, who notes amongst bird and water garden designs that “I expect you boys will like the Zoo Garden best, but your sisters will prefer the Enchanted Flower Garden.” A second hand book to look out for, predating many recent books and seed company’s ranges (such as www.mr-fothergills.co.uk or http://www.suttons.co.uk/grow_your_own.htm for children’s gardening. Suttons have agreat gardening blog too: http://www.growyourownclub.co.uk
Many of these colourful cartoon packets, much like the Doctor Carrot, Squander Bug and Potato Pete (see below picture) wartime cartoon figures of “eat more veg”, were excitedly bought by children and parents at Trelawney Garden Centre to help pass the holiday time, many proudly telling me about what they were growing at home or at school. Grow It! Magazine had a good article on children’s gardens by Angela Youngman in the July 2010 issue http://www.growitmag.com , whilst the Eden Project books for inspiring child gardeners by Jo Readman are also full of ideas www.edenproject.com
Gnome Guard on parade from The World War Zoo gardens collection at Trelawney Garden Centre, July / August 2010
Our khaki clad Gnome Guard also travelled out to Trelawney Garden Centre at the weekend as part of our wartime garden display. Here he was greeted by many other gnomes awaiting employment and a home, dressed in their civvies and colourful demob suits. The place was like a Victorian hiring fair for gnomes, all with the tools or symbols of their trade. So far our Gnome Guard member of the LDV, introduced to the World War Zoo gardens to mark the July 1940 renaming of the Home Guard, has not been stolen by gnome liberators. Yet.
Gnome guard on parade. Gnome Guard on parade from The World War Zoo gardens collection at Trelawney Garden Centre, July / August 2010
But before anyone questions his willingness to serve or wartime authenticity, gnomes bizarrely feature in the Boy’s Own Paper August 1940 nature notes by ‘Hedgerow’ on fungi, at the height of the Battle of Britain when the Editor worries not only about increasing paper rationing but about the threatened invasion “By the time you read this that foul fiend Apollyon may have struck at Britain, our land”). The columnist ‘Hedgerow’ whimsically notes: “One of the most handsome and decorative is the Scarlet Fly Agaric. This is copied by those who make garden ornaments and sold with gnomes to furnish a miniature wood or rockery. In my wood they grow freely. As I have a real wood I have no need for china gnomes, for they say there real gnomes in the woods and that they hold their meetings around the little red tables of the Scarlet Fly Agarics. I have never seen them, but as I write my nature notes under the light of an oil lamp in my little house in the wood I often wonder whether they are playing around outside or spying to see if I am properly blacked out.” (Boy’s Own Paper August 1940 nature notes)
So hopefully, during the summer holidays, you might like to paint your own china gnome, if you don’t have your own real wood and fungi. Wherever you are you could grow one thing, even if it’s in a tiny pot, as part of Garden Organic’s www.onepotpledge.org 2010. (Apparently if I encourage several others to sign up, I earn my very own Gardening Guru membership card or badge. How Boy’s Own Paper is that!) More growing advice can be found on the http://www.rhs.org.uk/ and www.bbc.co.uk/digin BBC Dig In campaign pages. You can also sign up to “do one thing” campaign, part of International Year of Biodiversity 2010, http://www.biodiversityislife.net/?q=do-one-thing the theme of some of our summer 2010 activity weeks at Newquay Zoo www.newquayzoo.org.uk
Finally, if you are in London this August, look out for wartime chickens and WLA Land girls! There is a Wartime Farm outside the Imperial War Museum 12-15 and 19-22 August (admission free) as part of their Ministry of Food wartime rationing exhibition, (small admission charge to exhibition). These are both mentioned in the August 2010 Grow Your Own magazine www.growfruitandveg.co.uk has a well illustrated article by Sara Cork interviewing wartime Land girl Joan Proctor. The main exhibition Ministry of Food www.food.iwm.org.uk continues until early January 2011 and marks the 70th anniversary of rationing and also the Dig for Victory Campaign.
Hopefully there were lots of bumper holiday ideas on our blog to keep the whole family busy this August (or winter!) Off to try some Cold Ovaltine!
Hooray We passed our 6000th page view today on 8th August 2010!
For all enquiries or comments re. World War Zoo gardens project, contact us via the comments page below.
If stuck inside, 21st century child style, you might like to check out our past blog entries, look at the macaque monkey webcam on www.newquayzoo.org.uk or join our World War Zoo gardens’ official Facebook page (to eventually replace our original world war zoo worldwarzoogardener pages).
Look out for future blog articles on the Vive la French Marigolds! The Entente Cordiale: Friend or Foe, Garden allies, pests and sympathetic planting – flowers and herbs in wartime garden.
25 July 2010 The Lizard NNR National Nature Reserve
Our collegues at Ntaural England have fabulous free event to attend:
“Let us bring the inhabitants and history of the heathland to life with our Eco-Trail Challenge.
Plant bingo, making your own paint brush and painting using natural inks, a bird diner and living history you will have a brilliant day of discovery and adventure around the heath and the historical Ministry of Defence Second World War buildings.”
The main WWII stuff is taking place in the Happidrome where there will be a storyteller doing a 15 minute piece in costume throughout the day on the history and natural history of the site.
Atmospheric stuff, a radio receiver lit up in background and someone dressed as a WAAF or WREN, just like the ones from the photograph and poster from our World War Zoo gardens archive on display.
There will be code cracking challenges, art, bird spotting and storytelling. The event is aimed at children and families as part of the Discovering Places Events (part of the UK countdown to the 2012 Olympics) http://www.london2012.com/events/goonhilly-eco-trail-day.php
Wartime, gardening and outdoor events we're involved in - we've loaned an image and information from our archive of WAAFs in an underground radar station to the Discovering Places Day, Lizard NNR Goonhilly 25th July. Come and meet us as a wartime zoo garden on tour at Trelawney Garden Centre near Wadebridge in Cornwall, along with our minibeasts on 31 July and 1st August 2010.
This is also the opening of the new easy access path providing wheelchair and buggy access allowing everyone to enjoy the incredible wild heath area that characterises the Lizard Peninsula.
Suitable for families there will be something for all ages to enjoy, trail activities all accessible by wheelchairs.
Time: Sunday, 25th July, the trail will be open 11am until 3pm
Meet: Goonhilly Downs Car Park off the B3293 just after Goonhilly Earth Station when coming from Helston
Booking: No need to book just turn up, last opportunity to start trail is at 3pm. For more information contact Claire Scott Community Outreach Adviser at The Lizard NNR, Natural England 01326 240808
Free parking and toilets available (including disabled). This event is free!
________________________________________________________
There’s a beautiful leaflet about the history and natural history of the site featuring our photo too. Having worked in the Lizard area, I’ve spotted the anti-glider defences form 1939/40 stone cairns for erecting tall posts to keep this vulnerable area safe from invasion.
RAF Treyew on the cliffs near Newquay Zoo is another example of a Chain Home station Radar complex, now derelict on private farmland but just visible from the road. There’s more about these stations and other wartime underground sites for Home Guard auxilliary units and Observer Corps at the Subterranea Britannica website http://www.subbrit.org.uk on such stations.
Find out all the latest news about Newquay Zoo plus videos and much more.
worldwarzoogardener1939
Worldwarzoogardener1939's Blog 