Rare colour photos taken of A and B squadron from the 43rd Battalion, Royal Tank Regiment, 33rd Brigade undertaking a training exercise in Churchill Tanks on the New Forest around Wilverley Plain and Long Slade Bottom. After discussing the operation on the tank turret the squadron leader gives instructions to the tank commanders and they move out across the New Forest heath land to complete the exercise with some live firing.
We now know more information about this event following research in the War Diaries held in the National Archives. Reports on the days parading can be found in 3 different diary entries with differing levels of information.
War Diary Entry for the 43rd Battalion Royal Tank Regiment
13th August 1942 – 33 Tank Brigade paraded at full strength in battalion ‘Leagers’ for the benefit of 9th Infantry Brigade
War Diary Entry for the HQ 33rd Army Tank Brigade
13th August 1942 – Brigade parades at Long Slade Bottom in triangular Leager formations – very effective indeed and excellent demonstration is given to divisional spectators. The Tks merge in very well to rough heathland. Brigadier addresses spectators on loud speaker equipment.
War Diary Entry for the HQ 9th Infantry Brigade
13th August 1942 – Parade of tanks by 33rd Army Tank Brigade held at Long Slade Barrow 11:30hrs
All Photos are credit: Imperial War Museum for Non-Commercial Use (Licence)
There are also additional sets of photos and a British Pathe Video of Churchill Tanks in the New Forest:
Fascinating accounts of commoning life have been brought together in a new collection of memories and photographs.
Through Our Ancestors’ Eyes features the stories of 20 families and hundreds of photographs depicting commoning, forestry and agriculture in the Forest.
The project was part of Our Past, Our Future, a £4.4 million Landscape Partnership Scheme for the New Forest supported by the National Lottery Heritage Fund. Led by the New Forest National Park Authority in partnership with 10 other organisations, the scheme has undertaken 21 projects to restore lost habitats, develop skills and inspire a new generation to champion and care for the New Forest.
The archive, which includes audio clips plus transcriptions, was created by the Commoners Defence Association (CDA) with help from the New Forest Heritage Centre. Volunteer Patrick Keane, with the help of Kerry Barrass, spent many hours preparing the records for publication on the web.
Hear members of well-known commoning families talk about their ancestors and life in the forest.
All the photographs, audio files and transcripts are stored at the Christopher Tower Library at the New Forest Heritage Centre in Lyndhurst, and are available on the New Forest Knowledge website. https://nfknowledge.org/groups/through-our-ancestors-eyes/
National park archaeologists are working with Beaulieu Estate to conserve and display an ice house that can be found on the estate grounds. This is one of the projects in the £4.4million Our Past Our Future heritage lottery fund scheme. As most of the structure is buried a laser scan of the ice house was commissioned creating a very detailed dataset to inform conservation work, but also provide an educational tool. You can see an animation created from the laser scanning below.
So what is an ice house?
Brick underground ice houses can be found in the grounds of many large and not so large estates. In England, the first were constructed in the early 17th century by King James I who is credited with having one built at Greenwich in 1616. One of the earliest ice houses once existed in the grounds of the Queen’s House at Lyndhurst probably constructed before the end of the 17th century. They remained popular with wealthy landowners on their estates until the end of the 19th century when refrigeration was being introduced and ice was being produced commercially rather than being imported. Domestic refrigeration becoming more common from the 1920s onwards. The Beaulieu Ice house is a late example constructed in the 1870s.
The underground chambers provided a temperature controlled environment allowing ice cut from local fresh water supplies in winter or imported ice to be stored for long periods of time. The ice house typically contains a drain at its base that would have originally allowed waste water to drain away as ice melted. In many cases ice could remain in the ice house for anything between 12 and 18 months. The ice houses could also be used to store food at the same time as the ice thus prolonging it’s shelf life. As well as preserving food, ice could also be used to create a freezing compound in the ice house by combining it with salt. Placing a container within the freezing compound allows any liquid to be frozen and was the traditional method for producing ice cream.
The ventilator at the top of the internal dome of the Beaulieu ice house visible in the 3D animation below is an unusual feature and relates to its later use. During the Second World War the ice house became an apple store that allowed apples from the adjacent orchard to be kept many months after harvesting. Storing apples requires the space to be ventilated due to the CO2 they give off that would pool in the bottom of the ice house and be lethal.
The ice house is built from both red and also yellow (Beaulieu buff) bricks stamped ‘Beaulieu’ and made at the estate brickworks at Baileys Hard on the Beaulieu River (A similar project has been working to record the surviving kiln, which you can read about here: Beaulieu Brick Kiln). It is also worth noting that the Beaulieu ice house would have been covered by soil to increase it’s insulation, the soil has been removed at some point in the past.
Beaulieu ice house is a grade II listed building #1094424
Volunteers have been involved with cleaning and re-pointing the ice house and listed building consent will be sought to repair the break between the dome and the tunnel entrance.
Beaulieu Ice House Laser Scan Animation created by Archaeovision
Beaulieu Ice House 3D model for you to explore created by Archaeovision
A series of photos showing Churchill Tanks of 33rd Army Tank Brigade manoeuvring en masse near Brockenhurst in the New Forest, 13 August 1942.
The photos show Churchill Mk I Tanks with hull-mounted 3-inch guns. The units involved were 43 RTR, 144 RAC & 148 RAC all part of the 33rd Army Tank Brigade attached to the 3rd Infantry Division. It was noted that even though they were very heavy they could move at speed across any terrain including any New Forest obstacles.
We now know more information about this event following research in the War Diaries held in the National Archives; mentions of the days parading can be found in 3 different diary entries with differing levels of information.
War Diary Entry for the 43rd Battalion Royal Tank Regiment
13th August 1942 – 33 Tank Brigade paraded at full strength in battalion ‘Laegers’ for the benefit of 9th Infantry Brigade
War Diary Entry for the HQ 33rd Army Tank Brigade
13th August 1942 – Brigade parades at Long Slade Bottom in triangular Laeger formations – very effective indeed and excellent demonstration is reviewed by divisional spectators. The XX(word unreadable – see photo) is very well to rough heathland. Brigadier addresses spectators on loud speaker equipment.
War Diary Entry for the HQ 9th Infantry Brigade
13th August 1942 – Parade of tanks by 33rd Army Tank Brigade held at Long Slade Barrow 11:30hrs
All Photos are credit: Imperial War Museum for Non-Commercial Use (Licence)
The New Forest Heritage Centre has made its historic poster collection available to view on the New Forest Knowledge website. Volunteers have catalogued the posters and digitised them by scanning and using image composite software to stitch the individual scans together. The results are seamless. They put each of the posters into its own preservation grade sleeves to protect it.
It also includes recent acquisitions such as a list of people entitled to vote in the election of a knight of the shire, the formal title for a member of parliament (MP) representing a county constituency in the House of Commons, for the parish of Eling dated 1878.
This coin was found on the New Forest coastline near Lymington. We would like to try and identify the crest.
Crest contains a Portcullis topped by a helmet with a text banner underneath and supported by a lion on the sinister side and possibly another lion on the Dexter side?
A large collection of military orders, letters, defence plans and hand drawn maps relating to the New Forest’s Home Guard, lovingly created and kept in a huge elegant scrap book and ledgers by Major Crofton’s father, Sir Morgan Crofton. Major Crofton, Sir Morgan’s son, has kept this collection as part of their family archive.
Sir Morgan Crofton was 2nd Commander of the 9th Forest Battalion. Later a branch was formed in Christchurch which covered the south west area of the Forest, the 28th Christchurch Bay Battalion, Sir Morgan Crofton was Commander of this Battalion. The documents relate to the Home Guard and includes detailed maps drawn by Sir Morgan and original documents.
Brockenhurst Platoon Defence Scheme.
One of the many hand drawn maps by Sir Morgan, shows the Brockenhurst Platoon Defence Scheme dated 1943. This map shows the positions of HQ’s (company and platoon level headquarters), tank traps and other military buildings or posts. Is it a unique collection of documentation that probably should have been destroyed once it was read. We are very thankful to Major Crofton for allowing us to view and show his father’s collection.
Can you help? To help the search tool for this site find terms in these pages we need them to be transcribed. If you can help, please do get in touch.
The New Forest Register of Decisions of Claims to Forest Rights published in 1858 is the handbook of who is entitled to what on the New Forest. In many commoning families it is regarded as the ‘bible’ of the Forest. Following inquries into the management of all the Royal Forests a decade earlier it was decided that updating the register of claims would be an important part of valuing the New Forest. The 1848 inquiry concluded that a separation of commoners rights from crown rights would be of advantage to the crown. The deer would be removed and more land could be set aside for timber plantations.
The book was one of the famous government ‘blue books’ printed by Eyre and Spottiswood for Her Majesty’s Stationery Office. The Eyre was George Eyre a member of the family still resident in Bramshaw who have been active for many generations in Forest affairs. One thousand three hundred and eleven claims are listed in the book, all are shown as either amended or disallowed. Apart from the claim number they give name, address and occupation of the claimant, the date the decision was made, the nature of the claim as amended and the size and location of the lands to which they refer.
The claims are for common of pasture, turbary, mast, fuel wood, sheep and marl. The first is the most important today allowing the successful claimant to depasture ponies, donkeys or cattle on the Forest.
Right
Allowed
Pasture
Ponies, Donkeys, Cattle
Turbary
Cutting turf for burning
Mast
Pigs to eat acorns in the autumn
Fuel wood
Wood for burning
Sheep
Sheep pasture, rare
Marl
Clay like fertilizer
The claim here by Joseph Short, Lyndhurst’s grocer, for tithe areas 209 and 177 cover the land now occupied by the car park and New Forest Centre. It looks as if the Centre could run ponies and pigs on the Forest for the right goes with occupancy of land and not the individual. This is also a reminder that for most people commoning was part of their way of life but not the only means by which they earned a living.
This book provides the basis for modern day claims although for ease of use the tithe numbers in the claims book have been transferred to an Atlas, a copy of which is held by the Verderers’ Clerk in Lyndhurst
