Battle of Britain Day remembered 15 September 1940

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 11^th 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 13^th 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 24^th July 1940.

Friday 19^th 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 20^th 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 23^rd July 1940–             Had a raid warning just after dinner time, lasted about an hour. Nothing happened, very disappointing.

Wednesday 24^th  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 25^th 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 10^th 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 16^th 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 6^th  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 7^th 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 27^th 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 15^th  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 19^th   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 18^th 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 27^th   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:

• https://www.rafa.org.uk/battleofbritain   RAFA website
• http://www.battleofbritainmemorial.org/events
• http://www.battleofbritainmemorial.org/the-battle-of-britain-as-it-happened/   Timeline Day by Day
• http://www.bbc.co.uk/history/battle_of_britain
• http://www.bbc.co.uk/schools/primaryhistory/world_war2/world_at_war/
• http://www.primaryhomeworkhelp.co.uk/war/battleofbritain.htm
• http://www.rafmuseum.org.uk/   RAF Museum Hendon
• https://www.airfix.com/uk-en/project-airfix/ Airfix Schools clubs including discount class bundles of Spitfire kits

Posted by Mark Norris, World War Zoo Gardens project, Newquay Zoo.

Acorns, Adlertag and Autumn in the Wartime zoo garden and a bit of time off work for a Wartime “Time Safari”

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 14^th  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.

Blitz, Battle of Britain, Broad Beans and Dig For Victory’s 70th anniversary at the World War Zoo gardens, Newquay Zoo

Fowey Town Hall, Salute The Soldier week plaque awarded to Fowey, Cornwall 1944 (Image from World War Zoo garden, Newquay Zoo)

Spitfires, Stukas, George and the Dragon: Newquay War Weapons Week poster design from Carmen Blacker and Joan D Pring at Benenden Girls School, evacuated to Newquay in the 1940s. Copyright: World War Zoo project, 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.

Gardening and garden centres for growing wartime boys, tomboys and garden gnomes. “Go to it, lads!” (The Boy’s Own Paper, August 1940)

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 21^st 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 21^st 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 6^th 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 31^st 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 70^th 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, 21^st 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.

Hush -hush! Visit a Top Secret wartime radar base in Cornwall.

WAAF servicewomen and an RAF sergeant at a Chain Home Station like RAF Drytree, declassified photo 14 August 1945 (from an original in the World War Zoo gardens archive)

‘WAAF’ returns to Goonhilly RAF Dry Tree …

GoonhillyEco-trail Day

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.

The price of oil, paint and big ships of all nations from the Ark to the supertanker. German invasions, budgets, The World Cup and the wartime zoo keeper’s vegetable garden at Newquay Zoo.

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 http://www.falmouthartgallery.com

England vs. Germany, BP, oil  and the “British Chancellor” have all been in the news  over the last week.

Admittedly, we mean respectively for most,

1. not war but World Cup football (though according to some  past England managers and Newquay Zoo staff, not a “game of life and death”, but “more important than that),

2. giant Gulf Coast oil spills and 

 3. British Chancellor George Osborne and the Coalition’s new Austerity budget of national shared pain.

Chatting about the events of the day to zoo visitors and staff over the garden fence at Newquay Zoo’s World War Zoo garden wartime ‘dig for victory allotment’, it seems that oil, the budget and the World Cup have replaced our frustations at Volcanic ash and swine flu.  Volcanic ash this year delayed enough holidays, stranded our zoo staff and disrupted world wide food supplies by plane. Volcanic ash grounded one of our staff heading over to the World Land Trust / BIAZA zoo nature reserve in Brazil whilst Zoo staff have to think about possible alternatives to air travel when travelling to overseas projects and meetings

"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 2001 fuel strike in Britain (Petrol over £1, outrageous?!) saw similar disruption to businesses and food supply, with a similar bit of wartime hoarding during the recent “snow chaos”  and deadly “Swine flu epidemic” beloved by journalists.

In the British and American press, BP is under fire for the PR and physical handling of its clean up operations in the Gulf of Mexico, with several interesting articles in the press. A glimpse at just one Sunday paper last week, The Observer, had pages of coverage of this environmental, financial, diplomatic and political “nightmare“, seemingly threatening the wartime special relationship of America and Britain. 

The analysis of these events in business and comments pages by columnists like Ruth Sutherland and Sir David King (no less than the Chief Scientific Adviser to Blair’s wartime British government from 2000 -2007) reads more like warnings about Peak Oil in Resurgence or The Ecologist green magazines a few years ago. Sutherland and King  argue about  of “a dangerous addiction to Oil”, our “thirst for oil’s inextricable link to conflict and corruption” and David King’s  warning of the imperative need to “end our dependency on petrol”, not just in Obama’s America but around the world.

Satirical press cartoonists don’t quite reach the understated and quiet anger of Zec’s controversial wartime cartoon of a torpedoed merchant seaman clinging to wreckage in a dark stormy sea, beneath which stated simply and unemotionally  “The price of Petrol has increasd by one penny – official“.

 Newquay Zoo amongst others, is not alone as a business considering the price and future of Extreme Oil, transition towns and future food and fuel security.

Newquay is no stranger to tanker disasters, having seen the Cornish coast  coated with oil in the 1967  Torrey Canyon disaster. Reputedly the prospective zoo site which opened two years later in 1969 was the dumping ground for much of the oiled sand from the clean up operation. Oiled birds were frequent ‘first aid’ inmates in the zoo’s Wildlife Hospital operational in the 1990s before passing up the line to experts like Rex Harper of the local RSPCA, author of Otter on the Aga and other animal books.

As for the “British Chancellor”, whilst the rest of the weekend papers were full of World Cup prediction and Budget summary, I was looking at a postcard and a picture on the Falmouth Art Gallery website http://falmouthartgallery.com of tankers on fire in  Falmouth Docks.

From near the Gem fish and chip restaurant up the Hill above Falmouth Art Gallery, both with many  maritime paintings on the wall, you can watch ships heading up river or into the docks. From the nearby National Maritime Museum Cornwall’s observation tower or from the Docks and its viewing area at Castle Drive, from  Pendennis Point and the fabulous rockpools at Castle Beach  or from the wartime gun emplacements of King Henry’s Pendennis Castle or matching St. Mawes Castle (both English Heritage) , whose garrisons once watched  saw Darwin’s Beagle sail home past, you can see still big ships of all nations. 

There are large cargo ships waiting for  bunkering for low sulphur fuel (an environmental requirement) before heading through the Channel or bulk tankers hanging around for months waiting for the oil or commodity prices to change.  There is the regular friendly invasion of Germans aboard giant cruise ships, heading off to tour the Eden Project or nearer heritage gardens like Trebah, Glendurgan or Trelissick (the latter two both National Trust) whose woodland walk up the Falmouth and Helford  river reaches take you (always by surprise) past huge laid up freighters and cargo ships in the river, a sign of recession in the 1930s, 1980s or of the fuel crisis in the 1950s. Trebah Gardens Trust was mentioned in a previous blog posts for its role as an embarkation beach for US troops in D-Day and its Archive of wartime memories, one featured below from the BBC People’s War website.  Secret resistance and commnmdo operations took place from the quiet waters of the Helford river sneaking in under cover of the French and Breton fishing fleets , whilst HMS Campbelltown and its daring Commando raids on St. Nazaire in 1942 are remembered on the Prince of Wales pier near Falmouth Art Gallery.

A week or two earlier I had been looking at the original big picture of the British Chancellor in Falmouth Art Gallery (viewable online athttp://falmouthartgallery.com ) with its Curator, Brian Stewart after an awards tea party. The Gallery was celebrating the fantastic educational and community role of the gallery recognized by another major heritage award received in London for our partnership work on Darwin 200, Darwin having arrived back from his Voyage of The Beagle through Falmouth Harbour. Newquay Zoo and Falmouth Art gallery, like wartime America and Britain, have a ‘special relationship’.

We were talking about how the gallery and zoo could do “Darwin 200 meets Spike Milligan” to celebrate landscape and wildlife painter Edward Lear’s forthcoming bicentenary in 2012 with a suitable “Festival of Nonsense” (other Olympic sized events are available that year). Lear spent two dismal rainy weeks, not quite doing much painting in Cornwall and Devon. 

Surrounded by the plant art of “A Mixed Bunch” on the walls, Brian Stewart was bemused and puzzled by my rambling tales of successes and failures of the World War Zoo ‘dig for victory’ garden at Newquay Zoo (including failing to get last year’s zoo painter in residence Cornish artist John Dyer to paint the fledgling wartime allotment plot during his residency).

Then the painting of the British Chancellor and its 70th anniversary date caught my eye – 10 July 1940. The first day of the Battle of Britain. The first day of serious bombing of Briatin , effectively the start of the Blitz. 

I asked Brian Stewart whether he and his team would be using the painting for one of his amazing award-winning “across the generations” community projects. There must be many in Falmouth Town and the local area amongst the older generation who grew up there or worked in the Docks when this wartime bombing happened, if the conversations at the world’s best and friendliest fish and chip restaurant The Gem up the hill from the gallery are anything to go by!

I’m sure Falmouth’s  wartime role and this fantastic painting will be featured in a forthcoming book From Sailing Ships to Supertankers by BBC Radio Cornwall regular broadcaster, harbour expert and pilot David Barnicoat (listen out on Wednesdays, 8.35 a.m. BBC Radio Cornwall). Falmouth Docks are 150 years old this year, its story being told in the book with proceeds going to the Mission to Seafarers helping distressed mariners of all nations.

You can read more of Falmouth and Cornwall’s wartime  story in Bob Acton’s two books on wartime Cornwall and Peter Hancock ‘s Cornwall at War 1939-45 (all usually  available on Amazon.com and E-Bay). 

Online or at the gallery in person, you can have a closer look at 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. Not quite as large as the ship though –  built in 1921 by Laing& Sons, Sunderland for The Britsih Tanker Company as one of 47 sister ships, she was about 7,085 gross tons, (10,925 deadweight) 440 x 57 x 34 feet in dimensions, a single screw propellor ship  powered by two steam turbines.   

During World War 2, Brian Stewart told me it was “evident that Falmouth would be a target for German bombers”. On Wednesday 10 July 1940 at 2.30 p.m.  hours, Falmouth  Docks received one of their heaviest raids, being difficult to disguise or camouflage being the third largest natural harbour in the world. The Docks and Harbour were well known to crews and ships from all over the world. Two years earlier, a large German warship the Schleswig Holstein had made a courtesy visit (or closet espionage trip?) to the same harbour. Falmouth streets today are still places to glimpse or hear sailors and crews from all over the world, not just during the Tall Ships event. 

Charles Pears’ dramatic painting shows three vessels ablaze. Three ships were hit, one of which sank.

The first ship,  British tanker TASCALUSA or TUSKALUSA (6499grt) was sunk by German bombing, alongside the Northern Arm of the Docks. TASCALUSA was refloated on 29 August 1940 and beached at Mylor Flats opposite the harbour for scrapping.

Two other ships were burnt out. The second ship, Greek steamer MARI CHANDRIS (5840grt) was in Falmouth in June for repair after a collision. It  was set afire by TASCALUSA but the entire crew of the Greek ship was rescued.

The third ship is the one named in the painting, the British tanker BRITISH CHANCELLOR (7085grt) was damaged by German bombing and set ablaze at Falmouth. She was later dry-docked for  extensive repairs before  being sold in the 1950s, renamed and eventually broken up in 1961.  A dramatic and hard life which ended at only 40!  

In Peter Gilson’s local eyewitness words from the BBC People’s War online archive  www.bbc.co.uk:  “The Docks became the focus of attention for the Germans and on July 10th 1940 the docks were quite badly hit.”

“There were three vessels along the Northern arm, the Maria Chandris, a Greek vessel, the Tuskalusa and The British Chancellor a tanker, fortunately not loaded with oil at the time. These three were hit and after notable acts of bravery notably by one of the Falmouth pilots who managed to dodge the fire to get on board one of the ships. The Maria Chandris was towed away from the burning wreckage of the other two ships to St. Mawes Creek and put on Amsterdam Point where it burned fiercely for three days …”

Strangely, Peter Gilson recalls “even though the whole of St. Mawes was illuminated like day, the ship fiercely burning for a few days 400 yards offshore, [an Air Raid Warden in St. Mawes] went around the village instructing everyone to put out their lights. The Tuskalusa was towed to St. Just Creek and it was allowed to burn out, after which it was broken up and taken away and used for scrap. The British Chancellor was repaired and put back in service and strangely enough, my brother served on it later in the war.”

© Article ID:  A8710210,  CWS 180804D 16:23:57 — 16:25:50 story has been added by CSV volunteer Linda Clark on behalf of the author Peter Gilson. His story was given to the Trebah Video Archive, Trebah Garden Trust,  supported by the Heritage Lottery Fund 2004

Marine paintings such as by Rob Jones the ex-fisherman painter of amazing Cornish seas, or the many paintings at Falmouth Art gallery and National Maritime Museum Cornwall show are often very good on depicting weather, a topic of conversation beloved of sailors and gardeners. Looking  at the sky and sea conditions  in the British Chancellor painting, above the clouds and flames can be seen tiny black  flecks of ‘flak’ (Anti Aircraft fire) from the AA defences at Pendennis Castle.

Does the British Chancellor painting show the following troubled skies?

10th July  1940   Weather Forecast

Overcast with rain over most of Britain. Southeast England and Channel, showery.

Combat Report – first day of The Battle of Britain, July 10 – October 31, 1940

The main Luftwaffe attacks concentrated on shipping. At 1100hrs a convoy was attacked off North Foreland by 1 Dornier (Do17) bomber escorted by Me109s. Spitfires of No: 74 Squadron, scrambled from Manston, engaged the enemy aircraft. At the same time Spitfires of No: 610 Squadron were scrambled from Biggin Hill to intercept Me109’s over Dover. At 1330hrs about 120 enemy aircraft had formed in the Calais area to attack the convoy between Dover and Dungeness. Hurricanes from No: 34, 56 & 111 Squadrons along with Spitfires of No: 74 & 64 Squadrons were scrambled.

Later in the day enemy raids took place along the West, South and East coasts with the largest being nearly 70 bombers attacking Falmouth & Swansea.

During the night, further raids were plotted with bombs dropped on Guisborough, Canewdon, Hertford, Isle of Grain, Isle of Mull (West Coast of Scotland), Colchester, Welwyn and Ely.

Statistics:  Losses include non-combat patrols and accidents

R.A.F. Losses: 8 aircraft damaged or destroyed and 2 pilots killed.

Luftwaffe Losses: 20 aircraft damaged or destroyed, 23 pilots & aircrew killed or missing and 10 wounded

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 A History of The World.

In the skies during the ensuing Battle of Britain , from the Newquay / Cornwall  Sector St. Eval, both  Gladiator Squadron  247  and Squadron 234 Spitfires of 10 Group  – there’s more in the book Devon and Cornwall Airfields in World War Two by Graham Smith. This book and airfield near Newquay Zoo was mentioned in our previous post about the Newquay / Watergate Bay Liberator crash relics featured in our Wartime garden weekend, May 2010.

And what became of the British Tanker Company that operated the British Chancellor? Around about 1954, as the ship was being sold, the  worldwide operation of the former  Anglo-Iranian or Anglo Persian Oil Company (hence the Persian national colours of red, white and green on the funnels) and the British Petroleum Company (ironically originally a German firm) finally became known  by the now familiar (or currently notorious in the USA) name of British Petroleum, BP.

We mentioned in our blog post title, From The Ark to the Super Tanker. The Ark always was an unusual boat, probably now aground and Stationary on Jersey. Newquay Zoo’s electrician Mick has an unusual Channel Islands family name, LeFevre, or Mick Le Ferret as he is affectionately known to some, being accustomed to working in small spaces around and under the zoo.  LeFeuvre is mentioned in a list of names amongst the fascinating website http://www.thisisjersey.co.uk/hmd/html/escapees.html

The list tells of many Channel Islanders and ships’ crews feelling to prots just across the Channel, escaping in small ships throughout July 1940 onwards from the German invasion of the Channel Islands –  Alderney,  Jersey and Guernsey (home of the world’s only Tomato Museum) . Some arrived into Falmouth in Cornwall around the time of The British Chancellor’s bombing, Brixham (home area of our sister zoo Living Coasts  http://www.livingcoasts.org.uk and the Start Bay area where The Whitley Wildlife conservation Trust has its Slapton Ley Nature Reserve (later events in 1944 there were mentioned in our June 2010  blog entry about D-Day). 

Newquay Zoo and its sister zoo at Paignton has long had a connection or ‘special relationship’ with Jersey, some of our staff from Directors to keepers worked at Jersey Zoo as keepers, others worked there as volunteers or trained at the headquarters of the international Durrell  Wildlife Conservation Trust, www.durrell.org  Our partner college Cornwall College Newquay www.cornwall.ac.uk established in 2000 has proudly named one of its new buildings The Durrell Centre, opened by Lee Durrell, the Honorary Director.

Gerald Durrell was and remains a huge influence on the development of conservation minded zoos around the world; had Durrell not failed his army medical through sinus problems, could have been called up.

Luckily Durrell was not killed in World War Two nor indeed was his mischief unleashed on the armed forces of any nation unlike Spike Milligan. Instead he was sent to Whipsnade Zoo in 1945 as  a “student keeper”, experiences later recounted in Beasts in My Belfry and Lucy Pender’s lovely memoir about growing up at Whipsnade. Whipsnade was London Zoo’s home for some of its evacuated animals, keepers and their families.

Keeper Billett of Whipsnade Zoo ZSL in tin hat and gas mask pictured in the shortlived 'Animal And Zoo magazine', November 1939 (magazine / photo from the World War Zoo archive, Newquay Zoo)

Durrell thankfully wasn’t too unfit as his adventures on collecting expeditions after 1945, some with Paignton Zoo keeper the late Ken Smith,  helped restock the empty postwar zoos of the world.

Durrell’s amusing books and television films won animals and conservation many friends in its early days.

His passion for training “Durrell’s Army” as they are known, the many students who have been through the International Training Centre from Durrell’s field projects around the world, have done much to preserve and conserve endangered wildlife and habitats.

I wonder what Durrell or Peter Scott would have made of the Florida oil spill? Without Durrell and others of his postwar generation like Desmond Morris, the late Peter Scott of the Wildfowl and Wetland Trust and David Attenborough, the natural and human world would be the poorer.  Durrell’s  books prove as challenging as ever, a personal favourite being The Stationary Ark, his image of the zoos of the world working as a Noah style ‘rescue ship’ to breed endangered animals past the ‘floods’  of environmental disaster. That’s one ship I hope is never sunk or scrapped too soon.

So, the high price of oil …Look out for more about the World War Zoo garden project at Newquay Zoo in future blog postings or conatct us via the comments page below.

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Sources: 1. Dave Edge, from Middlemas, The British Tankers 

2. www.naval-history.net/xDKWW2-4007-20JUL01.htm

3. Today in World War 2 History http://http://forums.ubi.com/eve/forums/a/tpc/f/23110283/m/1771097952/p/30

Royal Mail marks 65th and 70th anniversaries of World War Two in stamps

Britain Alone 13 May 2010

Land Girls featured on the new 'Britain Alone' Royal Mail stamp issue, 13 May 2010

The Royal Mail is  very proud to announce our Britain Alone Special Stamp issue. It is Royal Mail’s tribute, 70 years on, to those who stood proud and defiant against the Axis powers in the dark days of 1940. The stories of their courage and fortitude make for an uplifting and fascinating read, as do the facts surrounding the evacuation from Dunkirk, which also features in this impressive special issue.

http://www.royalmail.com/portal/stamps/content1?catId=120900785&mediaId=121600780

Dunkirk is featured and a local historian at our recent wartime garden event informed me that fishing boats from Newquay and Cornwall were involved as ‘little ships’ in the Dunkirk rescue, a story we’ll follow up as we find more.

Our other zoo blog features Charles Darwin and wildlife on stamps, a joint project with RZSS Edinburgh Zoo  http://darwin200stampzoo.wordpress.com

Shades of Dunkirk, the race for the Channel Ports: No it’s not 1940 all over again. It’s the BBC Dig In Campaign, Icelandic volcanoes, ash and our Dig For Victory garden at Newquay Zoo prepares for our World war Zoo wartime garden event, 1 to 3 May 2010

Dig In for victory - BBC Dig in campaign seeds ready for planting in the next few weeks in our wartime garden, getting ready for our Wartime garden weekend at Newquay Zoo 1 to 3 May 2010.

Two of our resourceful zoo managers have just made it back from a European zoo meeting in Hungary  as there were no flights to be had in the last few days. (Another keeper’s planned trip to our BIAZA rainforest reserve project in Brazil didn’t even leave Britain). The Prime Minister ordered British subjects to make their way to the Channel Ports, on the expectation that the Navy or others would somehow get them back to Blighty.Over the last few days one could almost believe that Dunkirk and the fall of the Channel ports in May and June 1940 was being recreated as part of the 70th anniversary. Maybe I’ve spent too much time in the wartime garden and the 1940s preparing our displays  for our World War Zoo gardens event at Newquay Zoo on 1 to 3 May 2010.

This event marks the 70th anniversary of the events of 1940, rationing, dig for victory (or dear life as some wartime wags put it) and the happier 65th anniversary of  VE and VJ day in May and August 1945. Street parties, Spam fritters and the like.

I eagerly awaited a call from the PM on national radio for the owners of ‘small ships’ to make their way to France and bring back as many as they could. Once the channel ports had fallen, U boats and bombers attempted unrestricted blockade and blitz of Britain. Goodbye easy food imports and luxury goods for the duration.  Hello rationing, recycling, gardening (and spivs with suitcases on the black market). I wonder if any of our wartime suitcase ‘display cases’ of wartime objects  that didn’t go through the Battle Of Britain with WAAFs or accompanied evacuees might have belonged to the Private Walkers of the time, full of the Nylons and hard to get items of the time. (We’ve got some of these luxuries in our wartime collection to show you, no coupons or qusetions asked).

Today's headlines are recycled into tomorrow's plant pots while yesterday's Dig for Victory posters and civil defence helmets look on. The fabulous Paper Potters and a successful potting up of sunflowers in practice for visitors to try out at our wartime gardening event 1 to 3 May 2010. Note the vintage fuel can as a reminder of fuel rationing and the modern BBC Dig In campaign leaflet! Paper potters in FSC wood are available singly or in sets from http://www.henandhammock.co.uk and http://www.mithus.co.uk

Hard to get items in Britain and Europe the last few days include flights, ferry tickets, coach seats  and even hire cars. The last few days of Volcanic ash from Iceland might have cleared international air space but they’ve probably made many people realise how dependent we have become on flying for holidays, business and international trade with a knock on and backlog in many countries and food producers around the world. It also makes you realise the appalling conditions that wartime pilots had to fly in with subsequent losses. We have in our archive a flight dairy of a (bored) flight mechanic in RAF Reykjavik in Iceland, servicing planes which didn’t quite make it over from Canada and America in one piece. Some of these were Liberator bombers.

One of these US planes tragically crashed near Newquay at Watergate Bay on 28 December 1943 with complete loss of life. Relics of this plane and other local stories will be on display at the zoo on our wartime weekend, thanks to Newquay wartime schoolboy Douglas Knight who salvaged some of these relics along with some very impressive shrapnel from the zoo valley at the time.   

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, whilst evacuated with Benenden school to Newquay. Copyright Newquay Zoo

We’ll also have some memories and photos of Benenden girls from that famous school in Kent evacuated to the Hotel Bristol from June 1940 to  December 1945, to accompany the Newquay War Weapons Week salvage and savings poster designed by two sadly now passed away Benenden Girls  Carmen Blacker and Joan Pring. Photos show the girls doing voluntary agricultural work around the Zoo valley area in the 1940s.

We’ll also be highlighting the daring exploits of plant hunters including Frank-Kingdon-Ward, employed secretly during the war to map jungle scape routes, teach survival skills and find crashed aircraft in the jungles of Burma and South east Asia.

A pilot’s silk scarf escape map of these jungles will be on display to illustrate this strange tale.

Silk stockings and scarves aren’t needed to visit the zoo but you could dress to impress in 1940s style to visit us on 1 to 3 May 2010. We’d love to see you … you can take way your little pot of a wildlife gardening sunflower  as part of 2010 Biodiversity Year as well and a few wartime recipes.

Cheerio and TTFN!

Until We’ll  Meet Again …

Mark Norris ,

World War Zoo gardens project team