Food was scarce during World War One and the government did all it could to encourage voluntary rationing. The poster that this short film dramatises was found in the collections ...
Charlie wrote many letters home to his family. In this letter he talks wistfully of coming home. He died in action in November 1917.
The letter is performed by Kieron Attwood, ...
The Coventry Blitz was a series of bombing raids that took place on Coventry during World War Two. By far the most devastating of these attacks occurred on the evening of 14 November 1940. ...
In the early 20th century, Ernest Carl Maisey was a well-known and popular figure around Warwick and Leamington. He was born in Leamington Spa on 5 February 1879, the son ...
August Schneider had spent the early part of his life in Kenilworth as an active member of the community.
As a British citizen and a single man August was conscripted and ...
The Schneider family had the misfortune to be Germans living in Kenilworth at the outbreak of the First World War, and August was an English passport-holding German in Germany at ...
After his role in the First World War, August Schneider returned to Kenilworth.
Back to Germany
Life continued to be difficult for the family in Kenilworth after the war and in May ...
The experience of being bombed in Birmingham during World War Two was something we all wanted to escape from.
Escape to Heronfield, near Knowle
Clarice & Richard Usher, my paternal grandparents, ...
During World War Two I lived in Yardley, Birmingham and experienced many bombing raids on the city.
Rationing
Food was very strictly rationed. One day my mother had got hold of several ...
William Henry Grassam was a headteacher in Warwickshire schools, including Southam and Bedworth, between 1915 and 1955. He was also an active member of the community. He married A.M. Hammond ...
Featuring extracts from the 1431 Household Account Book of Richard Beauchamp, Earl of Warwick, Archivist Amanda Williams explains how these extracts shed light on Richard’s famous prisoner, Joan of Arc, ...
Sidney Slatter was working for his father in Whichford, Shipston on Stour, when he faced conscription in March 1916. It was feared that his call-up to war would mean disaster for ...
George Henry Withers moved to Leamington in 1916, after a childhood in Weston Super Mare. Before moving to Leamington he had a range of occupations, including a grocer’s assistant in ...
Edgar Ronald Gardner (known as Ronald) was exempted from combat in World War One, working instead as an agricultural labourer. By World War Two he had become a film-maker and was ...
Ronald had previously worked as an agricultural labourer during World War One.
A film making career beckons
As an electrical engineer Ronald was always interested in amateur cinematography and in 1935 produced ...
After his time serving in the Royal Engineers during the First World War, Kenneth returned to Stratford.
Back to the family home and business
Kenneth married Eva in 1925 with a daughter ...
Kenneth and Carl Huxley were born in Stratford to parents Thomas and Elizabeth. They had two sisters and the family were living in Evesham Road, Stratford, in 1911, when Carl ...
In 1915 it was becoming clear that the new ‘industrialised’ style of warfare used in World War One needed a much bigger army than the country could raise by volunteer ...
I now live in Stratford, but I was born in Birmingham in 1938 and lived with my parents in Yardley, Birmingham until 1948. Our street, Barrows Lane, was about half ...
I married Ken Ashford on 23rd December 1939. He was a Coventry kid. We met at my Grandmother’s house. I moved to Coventry where we lived with Ken’s father and ...
I was still at school in Warwick when World War 2 was declared. At first it didn’t make much difference, except having to carry our gas-masks and putting the black-out ...
Sunday school attendance dipped sharply after the Blitz when children were evacuated and never recovered to its former numbers of over 100. For several Sundays after the Blitz the Sunday ...
Today, Rupert Brooke is possibly best known as a War Poet and is included on the Poets of the First World War memorial in Poets’ Corner, Westminster Abbey, alongside fellow poets, Wilfred Owen, Edmund ...
The war went rolling on and by the start of 1944, things were getting tight. I never remember being hungry, but I certainly remembered being cold. My grandmother used to ...
