The Great / War For / Civilization / 1914–1919
In Britain, the medal was awarded to every person who had served in the armed forces during the war, as well as civilians who worked in the military hospitals, those who served in the Russian operations after 1918, and in mine clearance in the North Sea. In Britain, the Victory Medal was awarded alongside a specifically British war medal – the 1914 Star or the 1914–15 Star, or the British War Medal, depending on when you had entered the ‘theatre of war’. More than six and a half million British Victory Medals were awarded.
The medal Leighton found is inscribed around the edge with:
8-3295 PTE A P BROWN DURH L I
which means it was awarded to a soldier with the rank of Private, named A P Brown, army number 8-3295, who served with the Durham Light Infantry.
The most likely candidate for the recipient of this medal is Alexander Polson Brown, who served as a Private, acting Lance Corporal, with the Durham Light Infantry. Private Brown was from Boyne, County Durham, and part of the 8th Battalion, drawn from the City of Durham itself. He’d been working as a pony driver in the Langley Moor coal mine in Durham, but when war broke out he joined the effort and arrived in France in July 1915, aged just 19.
In the records, Alexander has two army numbers attached to his name, 8-3295, and 300696. This happened frequently in WWI when soldiers were wounded and returned to another battalion, transferred between battalions, or when a whole battalion was decimated and the survivors were redeployed.
Two million British men voluntarily enlisted for service early in the war – spirits were high and everyone wanted to do their duty. But the death tolls were on an unimaginable scale and battalions that had been formed from a local area, known as ‘Pals Battalions’, were sometimes worst hit. It meant that whole communities could lose almost all their young men in one or two days.
Alexander did survive the war, and was awarded his Victory Medal, along with the 1914–15 Star and the British War Medal. He married Jane Walker in 1921, had a family and continued to work in mining, moving to the Hatfield mine in Doncaster. He died aged 82, in Stainforth, Doncaster. A long life, through an extraordinary time in history.
It’s not clear how Alexander’s medal ended up in Abertvidwr, but the finder, Leighton Jones, is keen to reunite such a personal item with the family of the man who earned it.
See also:
George Humber’s Distinguished Conduct Medal
Inverness Shoulder-belt Plate
Mourning Ring
A mother and her baby remembered
Date: 1735, Post Medieval
Where, when and how found: Bridgnorth, Shropshire; 2005; metal detecting
Finder: Tony Baker
Where is it now? Permanently loaned to North Gate Museum, Bridgnorth
www.bridgnorthmuseum.org.uk
Also visit: Foundling Museum, London
www.foundlingmuseum.org.uk
Museum of Childhood, London
www.museumofchildhood.org.uk
Tony Baker was metal detecting when he got the signal for this pretty, delicate, gold finger ring. He reported it to the Portable Antiquities Scheme, but as it isn’t more than 300 years old it wasn’t legally Treasure and so the ring was returned to him once recorded. What’s remarkable, and moving, is the story the inscription tells – not a story of kings and conquests, but a small story of a tragic event in the life of an ordinary Shropshire family.
The ring is made of gold, with five inlaid and inscribed panels around the hoop, set at the centre with a hexagonal glass or rock-crystal stone. The black inlay is probably enamel. It marks out the lettering very clearly, which reads:
MARY / &: SARAH / LITTLETON / OB 7:JUNE / :1735:
This is a mourning ring, popular from the mid-1600s, which people would commission as a memorial to a loved one who had died.
Tony was intrigued by the people this ring memorialised. He searched for the Littleton family in the parish records in Bridgnorth, and discovered that Thomas Littleton was in fact the parish priest of the local church, St Leonard’s. The ring commemorates the death of his wife, Mary, and their baby daughter Sarah.
Mary Littleton most likely died while giving birth to Sarah, or shortly after. Baby Sarah was christened on 7 June 1735 but died the following day. It’s quite possible that Sarah was very sick from the beginning – christening a baby quickly was thought to be incredibly important, especially if they were ill or weak. Then, if the baby died, he or she would be assured a place in heaven.
Until recent medical advances in Britain, childbirth was a dangerous event and the most common cause of death in young women. In a time before painkillers, antibiotics and blood transfusions, or modern surgical techniques like caesarean sections, if the labour went on too long or if complications arose, both mother and baby could die. In the 1700s, the average mother had seven or eight live births over 15 years, and in England records suggest that one in six babies died in their first year. Of the children that survived birth, 30% were dead before they reached the age of 15.
Doctors’ hands
Many women died shortly after labour or miscarriage from Childbed Fever. The bacterial infection was often introduced to women by the doctors or midwives who were attending to them. For a long time, it was thought that handwashing wasn’t necessary, especially for doctors. One obstetrician practising in America famously declared, ‘Doctors are gentlemen, and gentlemen’s hands are clean’.
A doctor in Vienna, Ignaz Semmelweis, attempted to encourage the members of his profession to take up handwashing. In his own hospital maternity ward, he insisted that hands be disinfected in antiseptic solution before moving to the next patient, and he saw a drop in deaths from fever from more than 20% to just 1% within the year. He didn’t know exactly how, but he knew that handwashing saved lives.
“Until recent medical advances, childbirth was a dangerous event and the most common cause of death in young women”
Dr Semmelweis published his findings, but doctors ridiculed his ‘obsession’ with handwashing and condemned his work. None of his recommendations were taken up. He eventually fled Vienna and was committed to a mental asylum in 1865, aged 47. He was beaten to death by the guards there, just fourteen days after he arrived.
It would be more than one hundred years after Sarah and Mary Littleton died before the French scientist Louis Pasteur developed the germ theory of infection, and was able to explain what Semmelweis had suspected. Joseph Lister put the theory into practice in surgery and treatment, and published his findings, to great acclaim, in 1867.
Mourning children
Previously, scholars had thought that people tried to invest less emotion in their children until it became clear that they’d survived the most dangerous childhood fevers and sicknesses. Death was much more a part of ‘everyday’ life than it is today, and most children would have witnessed the death of a parent or brother or sister, often within the family house. But evidence from letters, diaries and items like this mourning ring suggest that people 300 years ago felt the pain of losing a child as keenly as we do.
Mary’s grieving husband Thomas, or perhaps another family member or close friend, commissioned this beautiful piece. The wear pattern on the ring shows that it was well used by the time it was lost. We don’t know how the ring ended up in the field where Tony found it. He’s permanently loaned the ring to Bridgnorth Museum, as a powerful and moving piece of local history.
See also:
Billingford Amulet
Rochester Cufflink
HMS Colossus Shipwreck
The rediscovered 1798 wreck of a 74-gun ship-of-the-line
Date: Built 1787, wrecked 1798, Post Medieval
Where, when and how found: St Mary’s Roads, Isles of Scilly; 1975 & 2000; designated salvage (1975); accidental discovery by sports divers (2000)
Finder: Roland Morris (1975), Todd Stevens, Mac Mace and others (2000–1)
Where is it now? Some artefacts at the Briti
sh Museum, London
www.britishmuseum.org
Wreck in situ, south of Samson, depth 15m. This is a designated Protected Wreck and must be dived with a visitor’s licence, or through one of the local dive charter boats who will organise a visitor’s licence for you. More information at the Cornwall and Isles of Scilly Maritime Archaeology Society
www.cismas.org.uk/colossus-dive-trail.php
Also visit: Isles of Scilly Museum, St Mary’s
www.iosmuseum.org
In the 1970s and early ’80s, local Scilly man Roland Morris, in conjunction with interested sports divers and the British Museum, thoroughly excavated the known wreck of the warship Colossus. By 1984, it was thought that everything of archaeological importance had been recovered, and the site’s designation under the Protection of Wrecks Act was revoked.
It was sixteen years later that another group of archaeologically minded divers discovered an extraordinary collection of timbers on the seabed and five enormous iron cannon sticking up out of the seabed, surrounded by a section of the timber hull.
They were 350m away from Roland’s site, and it turns out that the site Roland excavated was just the wreckage of the bow (front) section of the ship, and the 2000 discovery was the wreckage of the stern (back) section. The mighty warship had broken up as it sank, and the two major parts of the wreck had settled separately. In between the bow and stern sites is an archaeologically rich debris trail.
The Colossus
HMS Colossus was built in 1787 at Gravesend, around 51m (170 feet) in length, 1,703 imperial tons and designed to carry at least 600 men. She had 74 guns of 32lb, 18lb and 9lb calibre, and was a ship-of-the-line, the finest naval military kit the British Empire had to deploy. Bitter decades of war with France and her allies pushed the British Navy to develop new technologies and new naval battle tactics, and in her eleven-year career, Colossus saw action during the Revolutionary Wars at Toulon, off the French coast in the Mediterranean, Groix, in the Bay of Biscay, Cadiz in Spain, and Cape St Vincent, off the southern coast of Portugal.
In December 1798 she was on her way back to England with wounded men from Admiral Nelson’s victorious Battle of the Nile, and a cargo including an aristocrat’s collection of Greek pottery, spices from Lisbon and the body of Admiral Lord Viscount Shuldham.
On her last leg homeward, Colossus sought shelter in the channel known as St Mary’s Roads in the Isles of Scilly, awaiting favourable winds. This was before engines or tug boats, so if the wind wasn’t coming from the right direction, the ship would simply wait to complete her journey. While Colossus was waiting, a winter gale whipped up and, disastrously, her anchor cable snapped. The crew deployed secondary anchors and tried to use the sails to prevent her from drifting on to the rocks, but the force of the storm was too great and she was driven into shallow water. Aground and pounded by the storm, she threatened to break up – all the men on board bar one survived in a hurried evacuation, and by the following day, the mighty ship had rolled on to her beam (side) and began to break up.
Some items, stores and parts were salvaged from the wreck immediately, including the embalmed body of the Lord Admiral. Many other items found a resting place in the sandy seabed, and were discovered by Ronald Morris’ team in the 1970s. Morris recovered over 30,000 sherds of the Greek pottery cargo, which were taken back to the British Museum where they remain part of the museum’s collection to this day. Some of the pieces were reconstructed and put on display.
So everyone thought they knew where Colossus was, which meant that the divers who found the stern site in 2000 couldn’t believe what they were seeing – 18-pound guns, with five cannon still in position in their gun ports, muzzles buried in the sand and breech ends sticking up; spreads of glass, piping, pottery and cannonballs; a large flat area of related timbers which appeared to be a significant part of Colossus’ hull. Most incredible of all was the vast stern decoration of this formidable ship, including a twice-life-sized wooden carving of a Roman warrior.
“Aground and pounded by the storm, she threatened to break up – all the men on board bar one survived in a hurried evacuation”
The wreck had lain undisturbed for 200 years, but for some reason (still not understood), the seabed was eroding away in this area, exposing the wreck. If it wasn’t protected, the timbers would quickly begin to deteriorate and be broken up by storm and wave action. Now that the site had been rediscovered, the race was on to protect it. In 2001 Colossus was redesignated a Protected Wreck, and in 2002 part of the carved section of the stern was raised and sent for conservation at the Mary Rose Trust in Portsmouth.
The challenge now is to preserve the wreck for as long as possible. Committed volunteers from the Cornwall and Isles of Scilly Maritime Archaeology Society (CISMAS), in conjunction with professionals from the archaeology and maritime communities and the Receiver of Wreck, are working together to determine the best way to protect the wreck in situ. Some sections may be lifted from the water, but conserving timbers out of the water is incredibly expensive and resource-heavy, and simply isn’t possible for a whole warship. Trials of reburying sections of the wreck are ongoing, along with experimental methods to halt or slow the erosion of the seabed around the timbers.
English Heritage have established an underwater heritage trail with key features of the wreck marked by permanent buoys. Armed with a waterproof guide booklet, qualified divers can explore the incredible wreck of Colossus while she still exists – one of the most unusual heritage sites open to the public.
See also:
Fort George Toy Soldiers
Inverness Shoulder-belt Plate
Girona Wreck Cameo
A digital reconstruction of the majestic warship Colossus at anchor.
CENTRAL AND SOUTH
MELLOW STONE COTTAGES, village greens and ancient churches, winding lanes and gentle hills. It’s a quintessential beauty that makes the picture-perfect backdrop for period dramas and tourist photos. This region is still romantically referred to as England’s heartland.
This is England as a ‘green and pleasant land’. It’s the England of ancient hunting counties and forests, market towns and prosperous residents. The Daventry Visard Mask lets us peep into the rituals of a 17th century lady, and also points to the intriguing and strange ways we try to protect ourselves and our homes from the unknown. Just like the people who made deposits in the hoards at Tisbury and Hallaton, making sense of the complexities of life has always been a human pursuit.
This region is where the idea of ‘England’ was first formed. King Alfred the Great, his son Edward the Elder and his grandson Athelstan were the warrior kings who wrested control of northern and western kingdoms from the Vikings, and united a nation, in name at least. It has witnessed brutal conflict across many centuries – Richard III’s Boar Badge allowed us to finally identify the real site of the Battle of Bosworth, the moment when the last English king died on the battlefield.
The deep history of this heartland gives us many secret treasures. On the Isle of Wight, a piece of Neolithic Axehead was discovered on a school trip to a garlic farm. On the mainland, intriguing treasures from Iron Age craftspeople include the Tanworth Comb and the Pegsdon Mirror.
The large river valleys of the Avon and Severn dominate the history and geography of the west of the region. The navigable rivers were key to the blossoming of the prehistoric Wessex culture that gave us monuments like Avebury stone circle and Stonehenge. More than four and a half thousand years later, the rivers brought extraordinary wealth from the British Empire into thriving port cities like Bristol. Artefacts like the Roman Slave Shackle remind us how many ‘great’ empires have been founded on the sufferings of unfree people.
The Romans successfully invaded in 43AD, but for a significant time before that the local people were in contact with them. The Winchester Gold Hoard is an utterly astonishing find of international importance, and it reveals that the Romans took leaders in their new province of Britannia seriously. The Coin o
f Domitianus in the Chalgrove Hoard shows that once the Romans arrived, it wasn’t all plain sailing.
Milton Keynes Gold Jewellery Hoard
3,000-year-old solid gold jewellery
Date: 1150–750BC, Late Bronze Age
Where, when and how found: Milton Keynes; 2000; metal detecting
Finders: Michael Rutland and Gordon Heritage
Official valuation: £290,000
Where is it now? British Museum, London
www.britishmuseum.org
In 2000, friends Michael Rutland and Gordon Heritage were metal detecting in a field near Milton Keynes when they made an extraordinary find. They found two solid gold neckrings, three gold bracelets and a tiny scrap of copper-alloy wire in a pottery vessel that dates back more than three thousand years, into the British Bronze Age. Between them, the five gold pieces make up one of the biggest collections of gold ever found from Bronze Age Britain, and the only one ever to have been found with pottery that can date it.
Because of the style of the pot, a brown fineware bowl, we can pinpoint the gold jewellery to the late Bronze Age, around 1150–750BC. One neckring is 76% pure gold (18 Carat), the others are around 85% – about 20 Carat gold, and together they weigh more than 2kg.
The neckrings, or ‘torcs’, are ‘pennanular’, meaning an incomplete circle, and are decorated with incised lines and grooves. Neckrings like this have been found along the whole of the east Atlantic seaboard – from Spain and Portugal, through France, Britain and Ireland. What would have made them so impressive is not only their decoration, but their sheer size – the largest one weighs 627g – a chunky and likely uncomfortable ornament to wear, but one that unequivocally declares status and wealth.
Britain's Secret Treasures Page 13