South Gloucestershire Compendium 1914 to 1918
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South Gloucestershire Compendium 1914 to 1918 (with additional jottings on the history of certain local undertakings, organizations, and facilities) Rough notes compiled by John Penny Version 1 - July 2018 CONTENTS OVERVIEW OF SOUTH GLOUCESTERSHIRE 1914 - 1918 AUXILIARY MILITARY HOSPITALS IN SOUTH GLOUCESTERSHIRE Almondsbury, Badminton, Bitton, Chipping Sodbury, Downend, Hawkesbury, Horton, Pucklechurch, and Tockington THE BRITISH & COLONIAL AEROPLANE COMPANY AT FILTON Appendix 1 Activities at the British & Colonial Company’s Filton Flying Field 1911 - 1914 Appendix 2 Temporary aerodrome at Filton used for the ‘Circuit of Britain’ race in 1911 FILTON MILITARY AERODROME 1915 to 1920 Appendix Visit of the Dutch Bristol F.2B Fighter to Filton on 9 October 1919 YATE AERODROME DURING WORLD WAR ONE Appendix Notes on the post-war use of Yate Aerodrome INTERNMENT/PRISONER OF WAR CAMP AT YATE NATIONAL CONCRETE SLAB FACTORY AT YATE HAND GRENADE FILLING BY CRANE & COMPANY AT WARMLEY Appendix Notes on the history of the Warmley Firework Factory ARMY TRAINING AT CHIPPING SODBURY 5th Battalion Loyal North Lancashire Regiment; 12th Battalion, The Gloucestershire Regiment No.494 (Motor Transport) Company, Army Service Corps LINEAGE OF THE ROYAL GLOUCESTERSHIRE HUSSARS 1830 - 1915 MANUFACTURING MILITARY MOTOR CYCLE AT KINGSWOOD Appendix Notes on the Douglas family and the Kingswood motor cycle factory MAKING ARMY BOOTS IN THE KINGSWOOD AREA Appendix Notes on the history of G.B. Britton & Sons Ltd MAKING ARMY UNIFORMS IN STAPLE HILL Appendix Notes on the history of Wathen Gardiner & Company OVERVIEW OF SOUTH GLOUCESTERSHIRE 1914 - 1918 At the start of World War One Britain produced just 35% of the food it consumed, and so Germany's best chance of victory lay in starving Britain into surrender through a naval blockade. Consequently, the country had to become more self-sufficient in food, and so during the autumn of 1915 Government backed organizations known as War Agricultural Executive Committees were established in every county in Britain. Set up by the 2nd Earl of Selborne in collaboration with the Board of Agriculture and the County Councils, they were tasked mainly with increasing agricultural output. The inaugural meeting of the Gloucestershire War Agricultural Committee was held at the Shire Hall in Gloucester on 23 August 1915, at which Maynard Willoughby Colchester-Wemyss of Westbury Court, Westbury-on-Severn, was elected chairman for the coming year. The Committee then began work assisting and advising farmers and the local District Sub-Committees that went on to be formed in every rural and agricultural urban area of Gloucestershire. Although Committees throughout the country considered that women would be unable to undertake the physically demanding work of farming, in March 1917 the Woman’s Branch of the Board of Agriculture established a civilian women’s labour force of mobile workers known as the Women’s Land Army. It recruited healthy young women over eighteen years of age, trained them for four weeks and then, described as landworkers, sent them out to the farms, something the organization continued to do until May 1919. In February 1918 a recruitment rally took place in Bristol, details of which appeared in the April edition of the ‘Landswoman’ magazine. It reported that some 2000 female landworkers from South Gloucestershire and 400 from North Somerset had attended the event, which had culminated in length of service stripes being presented in the Colston Hall. From the numbers involved it seems that during the early part of the twentieth century South Gloucestershire was still predominately rural. This is also reflected by the fact that at the outbreak of war in 1914 the only locally based Territorial Force unit was a small yeomanry cavalry formation, the Old Down Troop at Tockington, which had been formed in 1906. It was attached to the Bristol based ‘D’ Squadron of the Royal Gloucestershire Hussars, a regiment which recruited mainly from the farming and land owning community. Nevertheless, a certain amount of industry had already been established, some of which proved capable of being adapted for large scale war production. However, almost all such undertakings were located on or near the northern fringes of the Bristol conurbation in Filton, Kingswood, Staple Hill, and Warmley. In addition, during the conflict the War Office, Air Board, and Ministry of Munitions were responsible for the erection of extensive military and government facilities at Filton and Yate, while Army training took place in the Chipping Sodbury area, and Auxiliary War Hospitals were set up in suitable premises at Almondsbury, Badminton, Bitton, Chipping Sodbury, Downend, Hawkesbury, Horton, Pucklechurch, and Tockington. AUXILIARY MILITARY HOSPITALS IN SOUTH GLOUCESTERSHIRE Although at the outbreak of war in 1914 Britain was relatively well prepared to treat wounded servicemen, the War Office had substantially underestimated the number of casualties, and soon there were insufficient beds available in existing military base and voluntary hospitals. By the end of 1914 it was clear that more accommodation would be urgently required and Bristol, like many other places in the country, was asked to receive an ever growing number of British, Empire, and later American, casualties. Consequently, by the spring of 1915 the city was home to two large military base hospitals. The first, which had originally been established as part of the new Territorial Force in 1908, was the 2nd Southern General, and this was immediately activated when war broke out on 4 August 1914. Although based on the recently built King Edward VII building at the Bristol Royal Infirmary, the 260 beds set aside for military use soon proved inadequate for the number of casualties being received. Consequently, the Bristol Board of Guardians handed over their new Southmead Infirmary, which was eventually extended to accommodate 1040 beds, and this soon became the 2nd Southern General’s main facility. The other base hospital was the Beaufort War Hospital, previously the Bristol Lunatic Asylum at Fishponds, a 1640 bed unit which opened on 24 May 1915. Although both of the base hospitals were controlled by the Royal Army Medical Corps, many of the nursing staff were women, included in which were large numbers of Voluntary Aid Detachment nurses drawn from the ranks of the Red Cross and Order of St John of Jerusalem who worked alongside the military nurses from Queen Alexandra's Imperial Military Nursing Service. The Voluntary Aid Detachments were voluntary units of civilians providing nursing care for military personnel, and in fact the VAD system had actually been set up back in 1909 with the help of the Red Cross and Order of St John of Jerusalem. By the summer of 1914 there were over 2500 Voluntary Aid Detachments in Britain, while of the 74,000 VAD members in 1914, two-thirds were women and girls. Although VADs were intimately bound up in the war effort, they were not strictly speaking military nurses, as they were not under the control of the military, unlike those belonging to Queen Alexandra's Imperial Military Nursing Service. At the outbreak of war, the British Red Cross and the Order of St John of Jerusalem had combined to form the Joint War Committee, and pooled their resources under the protection of the Red Cross emblem. The Committee then secured buildings, equipment and staff, so that the organization was able to set up temporary hospitals as soon as wounded men began arriving from the front. The first Red Cross hospitals in 1914 were set up to care for wounded Belgian soldiers who were then being sent for treatment in Britain, but they soon became flooded with British casualties. Many of the buildings, which had been lent by their owners, varied widely ranging from public halls and schools to large and small private houses, both in the country and in the cities. The most suitable ones were set up as auxiliary hospitals, each of which was attached to a base hospital. The patients at the auxiliary hospitals were generally less seriously wounded than those retained at base hospitals, while in order to free up bed spaces clustered around the auxiliaries were groups of convalescent homes to take in those men who were recuperating. The auxiliary hospitals were staffed largely by mostly middle and upper class women volunteers who had been trained to serve in the Voluntary Aid Detachments, and locally, Her Grace the Duchess of Beaufort, who lived at Badminton House, was the President of the Gloucestershire Section of the Woman’s Voluntary Aid Association. In many cases, women in the local neighbourhoods also volunteered on a part time basis, but the hospitals often needed to supplement voluntary work with paid roles, such as cooks. In addition, local medics often volunteered despite the extra strain that the medical profession was already under at that time. The servicemen preferred the auxiliary hospitals to military hospitals because they were not so strict, they were less crowded and the surroundings were more homely. Both the 2nd Southern General and the Beaufort went on to have a number of Red Cross Auxiliary Hospitals attached to them to which they could send men for the final part of their recovery. Although some were located as far away as Cheltenham, Weston super Mare, and Warminster, most were to be found in Bristol and surrounding districts, including nine in today’s South Gloucestershire. These were to be found at Almondsbury, Badminton, Bitton, Chipping Sodbury, Downend, Hawkesbury, Horton, Pucklechurch, and Tockington. Quick off the mark were Hugh Wyndham Lutterell Harford and his wife Evelyn Nora Harford, who donated part of their residence, Horton Hall, at Horton near Chipping Sodbury (ST 75886 84267), for use as a 28 bed Voluntary Aid Hospital which the Harford family ran themselves, with Hugh’s wife being the commandant. Attached to the 2nd Southern General, it had opened on 24 October 1914, and by mid-November was caring for eighteen wounded Belgians and two men of the 5th Battalion, The Loyal North Lancashire Regiment.