ERO Conference: Saturday 1 October 2016

Norman Essex: What did the Normans do for us?

Join us to mark 950 years since the Battle of Hastings with talks from experts on how the Normans shaped life in Essex over the following decades. The long term effects of the Norman conquest can still be identified today, from the language we speak to the castles which punctuate our landscape. Find out more with talks from:

• Prof David Bates, University of East Anglia – 1066 in 2016
• Dr Jennifer Ward – Religious Life in Norman Essex
• Peter Berridge – The Norman construction of Colchester Castle
• Katharine Schofield, Essex Record Office – Essex in Little Domesday Book

Saturday 1 October, 10.30am-3.20pm

Tickets £20 including refreshments and lunch, please book in advance on 033301 32500

L32 Zeppelin Comes Down in Flames at Snails Hall Farm, Great Burstead: 24 September 1916

Snails Hall Farm, Great Burstead

Snails Hall Farm, Billericay

Local historians interested in the events of the First World War will instantly recognise that Snails Hall Farm, South Green, Billericay was the location where, on the night of 23/24 September 1916, a fire-damaged enemy Zeppelin (L32) fell killing all the crew on board.

Very recently I was given for online publication an eye-witness account of John Maryon (1897-1975) whose father then occupied the farm.  In September 1916 John, who had been in training for military service, was discharged from hospital having had rheumatic fever.  His bed was needed for the injured from the Battle of the Somme.

“I was given 5 days’ draft leave, which I spent at home.  During the weekend a Zeppelin was brought down and the debris fell into one of our fields.  There were the [entire] crew of 26 men (all dead and mostly burned).  They were put in our adjacent barn, with a lane running hard by.  It was here I saw a disgraceful scene.  Thousands of people had come down by all means of transport, and they were standing 5 deep in the lane outside the barn, wherein lay the German dead.  The front rank had torn the boards off the barn to get a better view and a brisk trade started with the R.A.M.C. and the sightseers for parts of the airmen’s furlined clothing.  This was being cut off by the orderlies laying out the dead, in exchange for money.  My father had about 4 acres of potatoes, which were overrun and looted, and 9 acres of barley trodden flat, and for the remaining year of my father’s lease, he was mending fences to keep his cattle in.  Long after the war, he received a derisory sum in compensation from the government.

“And the next week I went to France on my nineteenth birthday, hardly recovered from my crippling illness …”.  He spent a year away, fighting at Passchendaele.

“I returned from this to my home in Billericay, to find my father was out of his farm, it having been sold over his head, with vacant possession.  In fact he had notice to terminate his year lease soon after the farm had become a shambles from German aircraft and attendant crowds the year previously.”

The events of the war, and the experience of his father, shaped John Maryon’s life.  His account ‘The Political Conversion of John Maryon’ can be read in full online.

Andrew Smith

Book Reviews: Zeppelins Centenary Marked

Familiar image of Zeppelin L33 at Little Wigborough
September 1916

Book Reviews

The Last Flight of the L32.  R. L. Rimmell.  Albatross Productions Ltd. 2016. 24 pages (A4 glossy format with appendices).  £10.00 (paperback)

Marking one of the major events of the First World War, this lavishly illustrated booklet tells the story of the enemy Zeppelin raids over Britain and, in particular from page 8, official and eye-witness accounts pertaining to the firing and destruction of the Zeppelin L32 which fell at Snails Hall Farm, Great Burstead, on the early morning of Sunday, 24 September 1916.  It had fallen victim to incendiary bullets fired by Lewis Gun from a small biplane flown out of Suttons Farm airfield Hornchurch to about 9000 feet by 2/Lt Frederick Sowrey.  All 22 on board captained by Werner Peterson perished as the 40 ton hydrogen-filled structure fell from 13000 feet to the ground burning for an hour.  The victims’ bodies were discovered in the immediate neighbouring fields and placed in a barn before burial at Great Burstead churchyard a few days later.  Farmhands were first on site in early morning collecting items strewn across the land.  Debris was found elsewhere.  The illustrations pinpoint the location of the Zeppelins fall; tell of the sightseers who came to the farm the following morning, and of the brisk trade in souvenirs including scraps of aluminium and portions of the crew’s clothing.  Those who had guarded the site – the Irish Guards, those from other regiments, policemen and fire officials – later turned many items into rings, discs and crosses and “were not short of cash for some while”.

The accounts of these Zeppelin raids over Essex have been of personal interest for some while and, in the course of research into the raid over Blackmore on 31 March 1916, I had the pleasure of meeting descendants of the Maryon family who farmed on the site of the L32.  I had expected that this pamphlet would add little to what I already knew but was proved wrong.  If there is one disappointment with the work it has to be the extremely small font size of the text which made it difficult to read.  The review copy will be added to our Library collection.

Zeppelin. Volume 2.  R. L. Rimmell.  Albatross Publications Ltd. 2008. 74 pages (A4 glossy format with appendices).  £25.00 (paperback)

Sent to us as a pair, this book details the German ‘R’ Class Zeppelins which attacked Britain beginning in the autumn of 1916.  L33’s one and only raid occurred on the night of 23/24 September 1916, and with the fall of L32 over Great Burstead the day became known as ‘Zepp Sunday’.  L33 was fired at from the biplane of Alfred de Bathe Brandon flown up from Hainault.  He managed to deflate but not ignite its airbags. The crew, led by Oberleutnant Bocker, landed their craft in a field at Little Wigborough.  The crew were picked up on the Peldon road and arrested by the local constabulary. The forced landing, and the fact that the crew were unable to successfully torch their craft, enabled the British to examine every part of the Zeppelin.

Andrew Smith

Aftermath of the Zeppelin L32

Blackmore Area Local History: Billericay: Aftermath of the Zeppelin: Photograph not published before. After the Zeppelin: Snails Hall Farm, Billericay On 24 September 1916 a German Zeppelin brought down at Snails Hall Farm, Great Burstead.

Zeppelins Over Essex

Blackmore Area Local History: Zeppelins Over Essex (1): Much is written elsewhere on the Internet about the Zeppelin raids during the First World War. L32 came down in flames at Snails Hall Farm, Great Burstead on the night of 23/24 September 1916, as did L33 at Little Wigborough.  Commemorations of both events this weekend at Billericay and Little Wigborough.

Tudor Bread Oven uncovered by Archaeologists near New Hall, Chelmsford

Follow link here: http://www.essexlive.news/chelmsford-archaeologists-may-have-unearthed-henry-viii-8217-s-50-year-old-oven-at-beaulieu-park/story-29719399-detail/story.html

Environmental Planning Advice: Bernard Jenkin MP replies

BERNARD JENKIN MP 

HOUSE OF COMMONS 

LONDON SW1A OAA 

6th September 2016 

Adrian Corder-Birch DL 

President Essex Society for Archaeology and History 

Halstead

Ref: ac/corder-birch 

Dear Mr Corder-Birch 

Thank you for writing to me regarding the Neighbourhood Planning and Infrastructure Bill and its potential impact on the historic environment. 

I am most grateful to you for explaining your concerns in detail. We are very fortunate in having a rich historic fabric in Essex and everything must be done to preserve it. We must also allow appropriate conditions for archaeological investigation, as you suggest. 

I am forwarding your correspondence on to Gavin Barwell MP, Minister of State for Housing and Planning, who will be well placed to respond to your concerns. I will forward you my colleague's response as soon as I have received it. 

Thank you again for taking the time to write to me. 

Yours sincerely 

Bernard Jenkin

Tel: 020 - 7219 4029 Fax: 020 - 7219 5963 

WORKING FOR HARWICH & NORTH ESSEX www.bernardjenkinmp.com e-mail: perryc@parliament.uk 

Environmental Planning Advice: Rt. Hon. Priti Patel MP replies

THE RT. HON. PRITI PATEL MP WITHAM 

HOUSE OF COMMONS LONDON SW1A OAA 

Tel: 020 7219 3528 E-mail: withammp@parliament.uk Website: vvww.pritipatelmp.com 

Mr Adrian Corder-Birch D.L. 

President of The Essex Society for Archaeology & History 

Halstead 

Our Ref: ZA41906 

1 September 2016 

Dear Mr Corder-Birch, 

Thank you for your recent email to my office, regarding The Neighbourhood Planning and Infrastructure Bill announced in this years Queen Speech. 

I have noted your comments with interest and am supportive of the necessity for the finite areas of our nations cultural and historical to be suitably protected for the enjoyment of future generations, whilst safeguarding those areas which have not yet been thoroughly excavated and the possible discoveries such sites entail. 

Whilst I appreciate your current anxieties, I can assure you that the conditions you have noted as well as others included in the Bill are not in place to permit the disregarding of considerations for archaeological presence or historical significance to sites earmarked for future planning and development. As with any matter of planning, consultation procedures will continue to be fully carried out and the chance to raise any opposition, including on the aforementioned grounds, will always be given. 

I trust that this information will go some way to allaying your concerns in this matter. I would greatly appreciate if you could inform me of the proportion of members of the Society who reside in my constituency of Witham, so that I can further make them aware of this issue directly. Thank you again for taking the time to bring these concerns to my attention. 

Yours sincerely, 

Rt Hon Priti Patel MP Member of Parliament for Witham 

Putting the Witham Constituency, Essex and Britain first. 

Environmental Planning Advice: Douglas Carswell MP replies

Douglas Carswell MP 

Member of Parliament for Clacton 

House of Commons, 

London, SW1A OAA 

Adrian Corder-Birch 

Halstead 

31 August 2016 

Dear Adrian 

Thank you very much indeed for writing to me. I agree with you. I do think that there should be an onus on local plans to allow archaeological excavation work to be undertaken. 

I recognise that developers might not like it, because they will see it as an obstacle. However, I do think that you have a powerful point, and I agree with you. 

Warm regards, 

Douglas Carswell MP Member of Parliament for Clacton 

Historical Association. Essex Programme 2016/17

The Essex Society for Archaeology and History has received the 2016/17 lecture programme of the Historical Association, which meets monthly in Chelmsford.

Historical Association, Essex Branch

Programme

2016-17

Talks on Saturdays, 2.30pm, Trinity Methodist Church,

 Rainsford Road, Chelmsford, CM1 2XB.

Free parking at the Church or in the County Council car-park opposite

Visitors and prospective members warmly welcomed

 -  £3 donation requested

                                                 

2016

24 September              Female Secret Agents

Dr Juliette Pattinson, Reader in Modern History and Head of the School of History, University of Kent.  (There will be a short AGM before the talk)

29 October                  The Making of the West End of London in the 19^th century

Dr Rohan McWilliam, Professor of Modern British History and Course Leader for History, Anglia Ruskin University.

3 December                 The Myth of ‘Opium Plague’ in Late Imperial China

                                    Dr Xun Zhou, Department of History, University of Essex.

2017

7 January                     The English Enlightenment

                                    Justin Champion, President of the Historical Association, Professor of the History of Early Modern Ideas, Royal Holloway College, University of London.

11 February                 Always Remembering to Forget: Holocaust Denial in Britain 1942-2000

                                    Dr Mark Hobbs, Associate Tutor, Faculty of Arts and Humanities, University of East Anglia.

11 March                     The Protestation of 1642 in Essex

John Walter, Professor Emeritus, History Department, University of Essex.

8 April                         Aspects of Iron Age and Roman Colchester

Dr Patrick Denney, Visiting Fellow in the History Department, University of Essex.

6 May                          Medieval Pilgrimage to Compostela

                                    Michael Bloomfield, lecturer in Ancient and Medieval History in the Classics    

                                    Department of City Lit College, London      

For further information: email essexha1@btinternet.com 

www.history.org.uk  and  essexbranchha.blogspot.com

Spencers Gardens, Great Yeldham. Saturday 17 September 2016

Spencers Gardens will be the next visit for members of the Essex Society for Archaeology and History.