Contributor: NFNPA Archaeology

D-Day Is Coming Podcast – Episode 1 – The Forest In The War

D-Day is coming

In June 1944 the largest armada in history left the coast of England for the shores of France with the hope of this being the beginning of the end of the Second World War. Those that already lived here saw massive changes to their once quiet forest as the New Forest played a vital role in this epic endeavour by giving a home to the thousands of troops about to leave our shores, many of them never to return.

The New Forest Remembers WWII project has recorded over 80 hours of oral history interviews, the majority of them conducted by volunteer members of the project’s Oral History Team. Edited highlights of these interviews and their full transcriptions are being uploaded to the project’s Interactive Portal, an online digital archive holding a raft of documents, photos, film footage and archaeological survey data all relating to the New Forest During the Second World War.

Two of the team’s volunteers have produced three podcasts visiting the memories of those that lived, worked and played in the Forest in the build up to D-Day.

Episode 1 – The Forest in the War

The war begins, evacuees, bomb shelters, gas masks and rationing. Troops and the Americans arrive, the Forest became less quiet. But hush it’s SECRET!

Picture credit: Imperial War Museum (IWM H 1291)

This is the first of a series of three Podcasts for the New Forest Remembers World War II Project. All Material Copyright New Forest National Parks Authority.

You can listen to the other two here:

Episode 2 – The Build Up of Troops

Episode 3 – D-Day

You can find out more about the New Forest’s vital role in D-Day from Mulberry Harbour, to holding camps, road widening, advanced landing grounds, PLUTO and Embarkation by visiting our main page on D-Day in the New Forest.

 

 

D-Day Is Coming Podcast – Episode 2 – The Build Up Of Troops

D-Day is coming

In June 1944 the largest armada in history left the coast of England for the shores of France with the hope of this being the beginning of the end of the Second World War. Those that already lived here saw massive changes to their once quiet forest as the New Forest played a vital role in this epic endeavour by giving a home to the thousands of troops about to leave our shores, many of them never to return.

The New Forest Remembers WWII project has recorded over 80 hours of oral history interviews, the majority of them conducted by volunteer members of the project’s Oral History Team. Edited highlights of these interviews and their full transcriptions are being uploaded to the project’s Interactive Portal, an online digital archive holding a raft of documents, photos, film footage and archaeological survey data all relating to the New Forest During the Second World War.

Two of the team’s volunteers have produced three podcasts visiting the memories of those that lived, worked and played in the Forest in the build up to D-Day.

Episode 2 – The Build Up of Troops

It’s all change here in the Forest. Troops and equipment start to arrive to setup camps, airfields are constructed and life changes for everyone.

Picture credit: Imperial War Museum (IWM H11831)

This is the second of a series of three Podcasts for the New Forest Remembers World War II Project. All Material Copyright New Forest National Parks Authority.

You can listen to the other two here:

Episode 1 – The Forest In the War

Episode 3 – D-Day

You can find out more about the New Forest’s vital role in D-Day from Mulberry Harbour, to holding camps, road widening, advanced landing grounds, PLUTO and Embarkation by visiting our main page on D-Day in the New Forest.

D-Day Is Coming Podcast – Episode 3 – D-Day

D-Day is coming

In June 1944 the largest armada in history left the coast of England for the shores of France with the hope of this being the beginning of the end of the Second World War. Those that already lived here saw massive changes to their once quiet forest as the New Forest played a vital role in this epic endeavour by giving a home to the thousands of troops about to leave our shores, many of them never to return.

The New Forest Remembers WWII project has recorded over 80 hours of oral history interviews, the majority of them conducted by volunteer members of the project’s Oral History Team. Edited highlights of these interviews and their full transcriptions are being uploaded to the project’s Interactive Portal, an online digital archive holding a raft of documents, photos, film footage and archaeological survey data all relating to the New Forest During the Second World War.

Two of the team’s volunteers have produced three podcasts visiting the memories of those that lived, worked and played in the Forest in the build up to D-Day.

Episode 3 – D-Day

“Something’s going on”. Tanks, trucks, artillery, troops, noise. Roads filling up, convoys of vehicle for hours, queues for petrol everywhere. Then it all went quiet… D-Day had happened!

Picture credit: Imperial War Museum (IWM H22421)

This is the last of a series of three Podcasts for the New Forest Remembers World War II Project. All Material Copyright New Forest National Parks Authority.

You can listen to the other two here:

Episode 1 – The Forest In the War

Episode 2 – The Build Up of Troops

You can find out more about the New Forest’s vital role in D-Day from Mulberry Harbour, to holding camps, road widening, advanced landing grounds, PLUTO and Embarkation by visiting our main page on D-Day in the New Forest.

Daily life at Winkton Airfield

All photos are credit Bill Lee via Friends of New Forest Airfields

Bill Lee was pilot with the 507th squadron of the 404th Fighter Group based at Winkton Advanced Landing Ground and a lifelong keen photographer. These are a few of the many photos he took of the 404th and Winkton, including some in colour.

Prepared in 1943 and opened in 1944, Winkton along with several other sites in the New Forest was selected for the construction of temporary Advanced Landing Ground airfield which would support the planned Allied invasion of Europe. Winkton was a home to the United States 9th Air Force’s 404th Fighter Bomber Group. The 404th consisted of 506, 507 and 508 squadrons, all of which operated the P47 Thunderbolt fighter. The operational role of the 404th was to use the P47 as a tactical fighter primarily deployed for ground attack. It was closed in September 1944.

Photos from FONFA

Visit: Winkton Advanced Landing Ground Overview for more information and links to other ALGs

You can find out more about the New Forest’s vital role in D-Day from Mulberry Harbour, to holding camps, road widening, advanced landing grounds, PLUTO and Embarkation by visiting our main page on D-Day in the New Forest.

Daniel Defoe, A tour thro’ the New Forest

Daniel Defoe is best known, as the author of Robinson Crusoe (1719) but was also famous as a political pampleteer, and is often called the father of modern journalism. He was born as Daniel Foe in 1660, the son of a butcher in Stoke Newington in London, but used the grander-sounding ‘Defoe’ as his pen name. He was arrested, pilloried and imprisoned in 1703 for a pamphlet he wrote satirising high church Tories. He later wrote pamphlets for both the Tories and the Whigs. His novels also included Captain Singleton (1720) and Moll Flanders (1722). His three volume travel book, Tour Through the Whole Island of Great Britain was published between 1724 and 1727, and was innovative partly because Defoe had actually visited the places he described and observed the places through the colourful background as a soldier, businessman, and spy. ‘A tour’ after Robinson Crusoe became his most popular and financially successful work during the eighteenth century. Defoe died in 1731.

‘A Tour’ is roughly divided into several tours, or circuits, around Britain. Volume 1 contains three letters. The first two, Through Essex, Colchester, Harwich, Suffolk, Norfolk, and Cambridgeshire, and through Kent Coast, Maidstone, Canterbury, Sussex, Hampshire, and Surrey, are complete circuits, both beginning and ending in London.

…one of the best wooded counties in Britain; for the river on the west side of the town in particular comes by the edge of the great forest, call’d New-Forest; here we saw a prodigious quantity of timber, of an uncommon size, vastly large, lying on the shoar of the river, for above two miles in length, which they told us was brought thither from the forest, and left there to be fetch’d by the builders at Portsmouth-Dock, as they had occasion for it.

….and as I rode through New-Forest, I cou’d see the antient oaks of many hundred years standing, perishing with their wither’d tops advanced up in the air, and grown white with age, and that could never yet get the favour to be cut down, and made serviceable to their country.

You can read the full transcript online at Vision of Britain.

 

Day trip to the Rufus Stone

A set of photos taken by 22/318 Staff Nurse Elfrida Anne Parkinson depict a day visit of convalescing New Zealand soldiers based at No1 New Zealand General Hospital in Brockenhurst to the Rufus Stone.

The Rufus Stone is a monument that helps illustrates the origins of the New Forest. The iron-clad stone marks the (alleged) spot where King William II was fatally wounded with an arrow, during a royal hunting outing in the Forest, in the year 1100AD. The king was nicknamed Rufus, apparently because of his ruddy complexion and red hair, and was the son of King William I who was responsible for designating the area as the royal hunting ground ‘nova foresta’ that we know today as the New Forest.

In 1916, the temporary military hospital established in Brockenhurst in 1914 to treat Indian service personnel who had been injured while serving in France, was taken over by the New Zealand authorities and became No 1 New Zealand General Hospital.   It was one of three general hospitals in the UK which were staffed and operated by the New Zealand Medical Corps to care for wounded members of the New Zealand Expeditionary Force.

The hospital consisted of a main tented and hutted section, known as “Tin Town” located at what is now Tile Barn Outdoor Centre, together with minor medical sections at Balmer Lawns and Forest Park and several auxiliary hospitals in and around Brockenhurst.

It appears that Elfrida Anne Parkinson was based at Balmer Lawn as this is where most of her photos were taken.

There are another set of photos from a day trip and picnic to Milford on Sea: Here

You can find out more about the New Zealand General Hospital and its satellite sites: Here

Denny Inclosure – Sawmill

Denny sawmill operated during the Second World War between 1939 and 1945 and is said to have been the only sawmill in the Forest capable of dealing with large diameter timber.

 

All photos are credit: Don Bond

You can hear about the sawmill from Donald Bonds oral history memories and see the names of those in the photos here: Memories of Lyndhurst and Denny sawmill

If you can add any more detail about Denny Sawmill or any of these photos please add your comments below.

Dig Burley

The final fieldwork report is here!

Dig Burley was a community archaeology festival that took place in and around Burley during Easter 2019. It was a joint project between the Burley Historical Society, Burley Parish Council and the New Forest National Park.

It involved residents and volunteers opening up small excavation Test Pits all over the village of Burley with the help of archaeologists. It also featured talks, workshops and exhibitions.

You can find the fieldwork report for the 2019 project here (split into three parts due to file size):

What is a Test Pit?

While we can learn a great deal about the history of our towns and villages through study of historical documents and maps, place names, aerial photographs and so on, archaeological excavation is an extremely valuable way to add to or confirm the results of such research. The opportunity for large-scale excavation however, particularly within our established settlements, is usually rare.

Therefore, the excavation of a collection of test pits, which can be squeezed in anywhere throughout a village, is a good alternative. Test pits are also a great way of allowing a community, with the help of professional archaeologists, to investigate its past history and learn a bit about how archaeological excavation works.

A test pit is a small archaeological excavation, consisting of a square trench measuring 1m by 1m and up to 1m deep that can be dug by hand, by anyone, in an open space in their garden. The test pit is dug methodically, i.e. layer by layer, and carefully recorded, with the aim of identifying evidence of past human activity, usually by finding pieces of pottery and other material, or, if you’re lucky, archaeological features such as rubbish pits, building postholes or even wall foundations.

By collating the results from all the test pits the archaeologists will try to establish a general picture of the origins and development of a settlement, and hopefully find out something about the people who lived there.

The chair of Burley Historical Society decided to do a trial test pit and you can read about it here: Trial Test Pit Feb 2019

So what was found?

The soil profiles recorded in the test pits were varied and most reflect some form of human impact through agriculture over a long period of time.

Several prehistoric flint tools were found, including a beautiful Early Bronze Age barbed and tanged arrowhead. Two test pits which contained Mesolithic finds were logically located close to water courses, and the area around another Test Pit, which produced four Mesolithic flints representing all stages of flintworking, may have been a campsite. The Bronze Age finds from two test pits at slightly higher altitudes were perhaps lost by people passing through the area, hunting or interacting with the barrows in the wider landscape.

Early and High Medieval pottery came mainly from the Burley Street area of the village. This implies the Medieval settlement might have been focussed in this particular area. Two test pits had concentrations of Anglo-Norman and High Medieval artefacts such as pottery and roof tile, indicating possible places of residence.

In contrast, a very low quantity of Late Medieval pottery was found. This could be due to the impact of the Black Death upon the settlement, which might have led to just a handful of families occupying the more desirable plots.

A snapshot of the post-Medieval but pre-modern extent of the settled area is represented by the distribution of Verwood pottery, which was found in a lot of the test pits in the Burley Street area, around The Cross, and clustered around the Mill Brook along Chapel Lane.

 

Dig Burley Programme

A guide booklet and the ‘Dig It’ pack were distributed to all registered participants and volunteers, explaining how to dig and record an archaeological Test Pit.

Dig Burley HQ was located right in the heart of Burley at the Wathen-Bartlett. Visitors and participants were able to pop in at any time during the event to find out what’s going on or take part in workshops, help with finds processing or just grab a hot drink and a chat.

Workshops at Dig Burley HQ introduced participants to identification techniques for flint, pottery and bone, giving them the opportunity to learn more about archaeological finds, get hands on and  identify what was found in their Test Pits. Burley Manor kindly hosted a free evening with a special guest speaker: Tim Taylor, the creator and Series Producer of Time Team. Both this event and the workshops were open to all participants, residents, volunteers and visitors, providing opportunities to celebrate archaeology and catch up with the community.

All participants were encouraged to report back on their excavation progress and findings throughout the project, so that the project team could let everybody know what was going on throughout the weekend.

Want to know more?

For further details, comments and suggestions you can visit the Dig Burley page on the Burley Local History Website: Dig Burley

Or please contact David and Ann Etchells via: davidetchells(at)uk2.net

Also feel free to contact the New Forest National Park Authority’s Archaeology Team at: archaeology(at)newforestnpa.gov.uk

Dornier Do X at Calshot visited by Prince Edward

The Dornier Do X was the largest, heaviest, and most powerful flying boat in the world when it was produced by the Dornier company of Germany in 1929. First conceived by Dr. Claude Dornier in 1924, planning started in late 1925 and after over 240,000 work-hours it was completed in June 1929. The Flugschiff (“flying ship”), as it was called, was launched for its first test flight on 12 July 1929.

The Do X was financed by the German Transport Ministry and in order to circumvent conditions of the Treaty of Versailles, which forbade any aircraft exceeding set speed and range limits to be built by Germany after World War I, a specially designed plant was built at Altenrhein, on the Swiss portion of Lake Constance.

The type was popular with the public, but a lack of commercial interest and a number of non-fatal accidents prevented more than three examples from being built. The popularity can be seen by the 14 plus clips of the flying boat available on British Pathe.

To introduce the airliner to the potential United States market the Do X took off from Friedrichshafen, Germany on 3 November 1930, under the command of Friedrich Christiansen for a transatlantic test flight to New York. The route took the Do X to the Netherlands, Calshot in England, France, Spain, and Portugal before heading down the west coast of Africa before heading to Cape Verde Islands across to Brazil and then north via San Juan to New York. The journey ended up taking 9 months due to various issues and mishaps.

British Pathe has two short clips of the Do X leaving Germany and arriving at Calshot and whilst at Calshot a visit by the Prince Edward, Prince of Wales (later King Edward VIII, Duke of Windsor) and an interview with Dr Dornier.

“The Mauretania Of The Air” (1930)

FILM ID: 751.18 “Germany. ‘The Mauretania of the air’. Giant flying boat Do.X starts on first leg of Amsterdam-Calshot-Azores-Bermuda-America flight.”

Description: Germany. Aerial views over waterside aircraft hangers. The massive Dornier Do-X flying boat can be seen at the water’s edge. Shots of the DoX taking off from the water. Air to air shots of plane taking off. Good air to air shots of the flying boat over the country. Aerial view of the large shadow of the plane crossing the land. More air to air shots.

Intertitle reads: “at the second ‘leg’, Calshot.” Calshot, Hampshire.

The Do.X flies overhead accompanied by other planes. It comes in to land on the waters. People are watching from the dockside. Shots of the Dornier moving across the water. Shots from a boat going round the plane. Shots of various dignitaries going onboard the Do.X and meeting crew.

The Prince Pilots Do-X (1930)

FILM ID: 753.02 “Calshot. The Prince pilots the DO-X. His Royal Highness flies from and to London to take sole control during half an hour’s flight in world’s largest flying boat.”

Description: Calshot, Hampshire.

A motor launch draws up alongside the German Dornier DO.X flying boat. LS Prince Edward, Prince of Wales (later King Edward VIII, Duke of Windsor) is greeted as he climbs from the boat onto the plane.

Various shots of the DOX taking off from water. The plane flies around above the water. Interview with a man introduced as Dr Dornier. He talks about the DO X and how proud they are that the Prince has paid them this visit.

 

 

Early Military Button – Can you help us Identify it?

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?