The Battle of Lewes

 

In his book “Seaward Sussex”  - Edric Holmes, describes the battle of Lewes fought on a hill near Lewes in 1264.

In the great struggle of May 1264 between the forces of the Barons and Henry III, for which Lewes will always be famous, Lewes Castle took no actual part and merely surrendered at discretion.

"The battle was fought on the hill where the races are held. Simon de Montfort, Earl of Leicester, headed the Baronial army. The Royal forces were divided into three bodies; the right entrusted to Prince Edward; the left to Richard, Earl of Cornwall, King of the Romans; and the centre to Henry himself. Prince Edward attacked the Londoners under Nicholas Seagrave with such impetuosity that they immediately fled and were pursued with great slaughter. Montfort taking advantage of this separation, vigorously charged the remaining division of the Royalists, which he put to rout. The King and the Earl of Cornwall hastened to the town, where they took refuge in the Priory. Prince Edward, returning in triumph from the pursuit of the Londoners, learned with amazement the fate of his father and uncle. He resolved to make an effort to set them at liberty, but his followers were too timid to second his ardour, and he was finally compelled to submit to the conditions subscribed by his father, who agreed that the Prince and his cousin Henry, son of the Earl of Cornwall, should remain as hostages in the hands of the Barons till their differences were adjusted by Parliament. In this contest, 5,000 men were slain. The King, who had his horse slain under him, performed prodigies of valour. Richard, Earl of Cornwall, was taken prisoner."

By all accounts, it was a good fight, and the best men won. A touch of humour is added to one record wherein it is related that Richard, King of the Romans, took refuge in a windmill, wherein he was afterwards captured amid shouts of "Come out, thou bad miller." This mill stood near the old Black Horse Inn, but has long since been burnt down.

Accounts vary exceedingly as to the number of the slain, some authorities giving as many as 20,000, others no more than 2,700.

Robert Matthew Beatham - Victoria Cross

Robert Matthew Beatham (1894-1918), soldier, was born on 16 June at Glassonby, Cumberland, England, son of John Beatham, papermaker's foreman, and his wife Elizabeth, née Allison. While still in his teens he migrated with his brother Walter to Australia and was working at Geelong, Victoria, as a labourer when he enlisted in the Australian Imperial Force on 8 January 1915.

Beatham embarked for Egypt in April and was returned to Australia on medical grounds in July. He re-embarked in September with reinforcements for the 8th Battalion and six months later moved on to France where he was twice wounded in action—at Pozières in August 1916 and Passchendaele in October 1917. When the great Allied offensive was launched on 8 August 1918, his unit was among those ordered to advance from Harbonnières and capture the high ground of Lihons north of Rosières. On approaching this German strong point on 9 August the 8th Battalion, its supporting tanks knocked out by heavy artillery fire, was halted by a line of machine-guns. Private Beatham's company worked its way forward to enfilade the enemy position and, assisted by Lance Corporal W. G. Nottingham, he rushed forward and bombed the crews of four guns, killing ten men and capturing ten others. This action enabled the battalion to renew its advance. On 11 August when nearing its objective on the southern slope of Lihons it was again halted by German reinforcements. Beatham, though wounded, rushed another machine-gun and bombed and silenced it, but was riddled with bullets. He was buried at Heath cemetery, Harbonnières. His award of the Victoria Cross was posthumous. The citation praised his 'most conspicuous bravery and self-sacrifice' which had 'inspired all ranks in a wonderful manner'.

Victoria Cross Citation:

'For conspicuous gallantry and devotion to duty during the attack north of ROBIERES on 9.8.18. Pte BEATHAM showed such heroism and courage that he inspired all officers and men in his vicinity in a wonderful manner. When the advance was held up by heavy machine gun fire, Pte BEATHAM dashed forward and assisted by one man bombed and fought the crews of four enemy machine guns, killing ten of them and capturing ten others. The bravery of the action greatly facilitated the advance of the whole battalion and prevented casualties. In fighting the crew of the first gun he was shot through the right leg but continued in the advance. When the final objective was reached and fierce fighting taking place, he again dashed forward and bombed the machine gun that was holding our men off, getting riddled with bullets and killed in doing so. His heroism and self-sacrifice were not in vain and as his bombs knocked out the enemy machine gun our men were enabled to advance.'

Source: 'Commonwealth Gazette' No 61

Date: 23 May 1919

Medieval Feasts

 Saxo Grammaticus (c. 1150 – c. 1220), also known as Saxo Cognomine Longus, was a Danish historian, theologian and author. He is thought to have been a clerk or secretary to Absalon, Archbishop of Lund, the main advisor to Valdemar I of Denmark. In his" Danish Histories" he explains social life in the early Medieval life.

"Feasts".—The hall-dinner was an important feature in the old Teutonic court life. Many a fine scene in a saga takes place in the hall while the king and his men are sitting over their ale. The hall decked with hangings, with its fires, lights, plate and provisions, appears in Saxo just as in the Eddic Lays, especially Rigsmal, and the Lives of the Norwegian Kings and Orkney Earls.

The order of seats is a great point of archaic manners. Behaviour at the table was a matter of careful observance. The service, especially that of the cup-bearer, was minutely regulated by etiquette. An honoured guest was welcomed by the host rising to receive him and giving him a seat near himself, but less distinguished visitors were often victims to the rough horseplay of the baser sort, and of the wanton young gentleman at court. The food was simple, boiled beef and pork, and mutton without sauce, ale served in horns from the butt. Roast meat, game, sauces, mead, and flagons set on the table, are looked on by Starcad as foreign luxuries, and Germany was credited with luxurious cookery.

"Mimes and jugglers", who went through the country or were attached to the lord's court to amuse the company, were a despised race because of their ribaldry, obscenity, cowardice, and unabashed self-debasement; and their new-fangled dances and piping were loathsome to the old court-poets, who accepted the harp alone as an instrument of music.

The story that once a king went to war with his jugglers and they ran away, would represent the point of view of the old house-carle, who was neglected, though "a first-class fighting man", for these debauched foreign buffoons.

Willenhall Spa

In his book the "Annals of Willenhall" - Frederick Wm. Hackwood describes how in the 18th Century, Willenhall in the Industrial Black Country almost became a health resort : -

"It is difficult to imagine Willenhall as a health resort; yet it was no fault of Dr. Richard Wilkes that his native spot did not become a fashionable inland watering place.

It should be explained that during the eighteenth century, there was almost a mania to discover and exploit wells and springs, and to regard them as fountains of health to which the fashionable and the well-to-do might be attracted.  Before the newer fashion of sea bathing was introduced—which was early in the next century—there was a great number of these newly-invented places of inland resort.  For instance, Dudley had its charming Spa on Pensnett Chace; and to show that Wolverhampton was not behind and, we take the liberty of quoting from the MSS. of Dr. Wilkes:

“A medical spring has lately been discovered at Chapel Ash, in the south-west part of this town, which purges moderately and without the least uneasiness.  A brown ocre, or absorbent earth, remains after evaporation, mixt with salt and sulphur; so that it seems to promise relief in all kinds of disorders proceeding from costiveness, and alcaline, fiery, and acid humours in the stomach and bowels, attended by a flow of feverish heat, eruptions on the skin called scorbutic, headaches, giddiness, flatulency, sour eructations, flying pains called nervous and rheumatic, the hemorrhoids or piles, asthma, and many other disorders which seem incurable by the most powerful medicines.”

Truly the Doctor might have earned a good living nowadays by writing the advertisements for modern quack specifics.

Shaw’s description of the Willenhall Spa says that “the spring arises on the north side of a brook which runs almost directly from the west to the east, and so very near to it that a moderate shower will raise the brook as to cover it.  About 200 yards up this brook, on the same side, are several springs, one of which was much taken notice of by our ancestors, and consecrated to St. Sunday, no common saint.  "

THE GRAMOPHONE RECORDER.

 

In his book "The Progress of Invention in the Nineteenth Century" - Edward W, Byrn describes the workings of the Gramophone Recorder. -

"The gramophone is also another speaking machine. This is the invention of Mr. E. Berliner and covered by him in patent No. 372,786, Nov. 8, 1887. Instead of a wax cylinder, this machine employs a flat disc on which the record is formed as a volute spiral groove, gradually drawing toward the center. It is produced as follows: A zinc disc is covered by a thin film of acid-resisting material, such as wax or grease, and is placed in a horizontal pan, mounted to revolve as a turn table about a vertical axis. A stylus and diaphragm, with a speaking tube attached, are arranged above the disc, and when spoken into the vibrations of the diaphragm cause, through the stylus, a record to be traced through the wax, down to the zinc. As the waxed disc and pan are revolved, the stylus and diaphragm are gradually moved by gears toward the center of the disc. While the record is being traced the waxed disc is kept flooded with alcohol from a glass jar, seen in the cut, to soften the film and prevent the clogging of the stylus. The disc, when completed, is then rinsed off and etched with acid, chromic acid being used, to prevent the liberation of hydrogen bubbles. The etched disc is then electrotyped to form a matrix, and from this electrotype hard rubber duplicates of the original record are molded, which are capable of giving 1,000 reproductions. These rubber discs are placed on the reproducing instrument, which is arranged to cause the stylus to freely trail along in the spiral groove, and when the disc is rotated under the said stylus its record is converted into articulate speech. Such flat disc records give quite loud reproductions, are not easily destroyed, and may be compactly stored and transported. In the gramophone the diaphragm stands at right angles to the record disc and the stylus does not vibrate endwise to make a path of varying depth, as in the phonograph and graphophone, but the stylus vibrates laterally and traces a little zigzag line."

Sarah Broom MacNaughtan

 Sarah Broom MacNaughtan was born in Lanarkshire in 1864, she was the daughter of a JP and she inherited an income. Before the war, she worked as a novelist and for women’s suffrage. When the war started she worked as a volunteer nurse in Belgium

Here is a diary entry from 7th October 1914, As the Philharmonic Hall in Antwerp which was used as a hospital. 

"On Wednesday night, the 7th of October, we heard that one more ship was going to England, and a last chance was given to us all to leave. Only two did so; the rest stayed on. Mrs. Stobart went out to see what was to be done. The ---- Consul said that we were under his protection and that if the Germans entered the town he would see that we were treated properly. We had a deliberately cheerful supper, and afterward, a man called Smits came in and told us that the Germans had been driven back fifteen kilometers. I myself did not believe this, but we went to bed and even took off our clothes.

At midnight the first shell came over us with a shriek, and I went down and woke the orderlies and nurses and doctors. We dressed and went over to help move the wounded to the hospital. The shells began to scream overhead; it was a bright moonlight night, and we walked without haste--a small body of women--across the road to the hospital. Here we found the wounded all yelling like mad things, thinking they were going to be left behind. The lung man has died. Nearly all the moving to the cellars had already been done--only three stretchers remained to be moved.

One wounded English sergeant helped us. Otherwise, everything was done by women. We laid the men on mattresses which we fetched from the hospital overhead, and then Mrs. Stobart's mild, quiet voice said, "Everything is to go on as usual.

The night nurses and orderlies will take their places. Breakfast will be at the usual hour." She and the other ladies whose night it was to sleep at the convent then returned to sleep in the basement with a Sister. We came in for some most severe shelling at first, either because we flew the Red Cross flag or because we were in the line of fire with a powder magazine that the Germans wished to destroy.

We sat in the cellars with one night light burning in each, and with seventy wounded men to take care of. Two of them were dying. There was only one line of bricks between us and the shells. One shell fell into the garden, making a hole six feet deep; the next crashed through a house on the opposite side of the road and set it on fire.

The danger was two-fold, for we knew our hospital, which was a cardboard sort of thing, would ignite like matchwood, and if it fell we should not be able to get out of the cellars. Some people on our staff were much against our making use of a cellar at all for this reason. I myself felt it was the safest place, and as long as we stayed with the wounded they minded nothing.

We sat there all night. The English sergeant said that at daybreak the firing would probably cease, as the German guns stopped when daylight came in order to conceal the guns. We just waited for daybreak. When it came the firing grew worse. The sergeant said, "It is always worse just before they stop," but the firing did not stop. Two hundred guns were turned on Antwerp, and the shells came over at the rate of four a minute. They have a horrid screaming sound as they come. We heard each one coming and wondered if it would hit us, and then we heard the crashing somewhere else and knew another shell was coming."

Barbed Wire

This article talks about the making and application of the soldiers favourite “Barbed Wire’.

It was originally published in 'the Illustrated War News', on December 5, 1915

“Barbed Wire is serving a purpose in the war perhaps only second in importance to munitions properly so called shells and bullets.

It supplies, in fact, the materials of which are constructed the first of the lines of defence everywhere, utilised, as it is, to form the outer barrier-network in front of fortifications of every kind, alike for entrenched positions in field operations, and for guarding, as an obstacle, the exterior lines of permanently constructed works such as fortresses. Thousands on thousands of yards of it - miles and miles, indeed - are spread out all over the fighting areas: in Belgium, in France, on the Russian-Polish frontier, in Gallipoli and Mesopotamia; and the breaking of gaps through it, or its clearing away in action, is an essential preliminary that the artillery has invariably to perform before attacks are possible.

Barbed wire is said to have been invented by a veteran of the American War of Secession, a Colonel Elbridge, who is said to have begun by experimenting with his wife's hair-pins. He used up so many that the lady one day took him to task for this waste. "Do not shout," he answered; "these hair-pins will bring us a fortune," - and indeed after many rebuffs, his invention gained widespread favour among the farmers in the United States for fencing.

When the Steel Trust was formed, the late Pierpont Morgan bought up Colonel Elbridge's works and patents for a sum which is said to have been, roughly, two millions sterling. In war, barbed wire was first used by the Boers in the Transvaal; and later, in Manchuria, both Russians and Japanese made ample use of it, as, in the Balkan wars, the Turks and the Bulgarians did. Now all over Europe its use is, of course, universal.

The wire-drawing works in the first place supply the wire to the barbed-wire factories in rolls or coils, and the manufacturers use it as received in the preliminary work of the winding-machine. The spools, carrying alternating carriages over each, furnish one of the wires for the manufacture of the main strands. The second wire requires a machine which turns the wire out in the shape of spiral springs with superimposed turns. These spring-shaped spirals are made from wire in coils or previously spooled. The carriage serves to regulate the feed of the wire as it winds on a rod, the size of these spirals varying according to the "looms" for "spinning" the wire.

Three twist barbed wire, the form of barbed wire used in the war, is made by means of a very ingenious machine the object of which is to plait three galvanised wires. Two of these form the body of the wire; the third serves to form the barbs. In the course of the plaiting operation, these barbs are automatically wound on one of the wires which is joined up to the second through the agency of rollers. The twist is then effected, and the barbed wire, as each length becomes terminated, is wound off on to a frame which facilitates its subsequent unwinding. The illustrations opposite show a machine in one of the factory workshops. As the mechanism works, a small knife automatically determines the place of each of the barbs of one of the wires of the twisted strand.

An eccentric at the same time feeds the barbed wire on a kind of finger, making it go through a double coil, after which it cuts the barb aslant to from the sharp point. During the continuous movement of the twist, the wire carrying the barb advances five to eleven centimetres, in the case of close set or ordinary barbs by the aid of a cam, and the following barb is only wound on the same wire when it has traversed the mechanically adjusted distance of pitch or separation.

Barbed wire costs about seven and sixpence per hundred yards. As every bombardment or clearing away of barbed-wire defences at one place means replacement by fresh entanglements further back, the expenditure on this one item must mean an appreciable sum in the outlay of the various belligerents.”