THE OLD HOUSE HEREFORD - THROUGH TIME

The Old House is, perhaps, Hereford's most significant landmark. Built in 1621 - and therefore easily 150 years older than the United States of America - it has watched over all the comings and goings in Hereford's High Town these last four hundred years:

The first (known) photograph of the Old House in 1873 - when Ulysses S. Grant was President of the USA - and the Old House contained an ironmongers and potteryware business, run by Mr and Mrs Oatfield, happily co-existing with Fletcher's fishmongers. Note Maddox's Furniture Showrooms in the background:

This looks as if it was taken about the same time (possibly the same day) but from a slightly different angle. A better view of the Victorian advertising hoarding that then covered one side of the building (including an advert for the "Midland Railway"):

Two later Victorian views (one coloured, both undated) put the Old House in context. To the left, at the top of Commercial Street, is the Capital & County Dining and Refreshment Rooms. To the right, in St. Peter's Street, Maddox's Furniture Showrooms continues to trade. Mr and Mrs Oatfield and Fletcher's Fishmongers have gone from the Old House, so these photos must post-date 1882, when the building was taken over by the Worcester City & County Banking Company (subsequently taken over by Lloyds Bank): 

Another Victorian view, but time has moved on. Maddox's Furniture Showrooms in St. Peters Street has become a hairdressers, the appropriately named W.H.Dyer. The Imperial Cafe in St. Peters Street (obscured by the Old House) seems to believe in very prominent advertising, no doubt to compete with the City & County Dining and Refreshment Rooms:

Two further shots, both undated but one coloured,  probably taken around the turn of the century or very early Edwardian times. Theodore Roosevelt is, or is about to become, President of the United States:

Now for some 'reverse views' of the Old House, with the camera situated in St. Peters Street, facing the gable end of the Old House that had housed Fletcher's Fishmongers, and High Town in the background:

High Edwardiana, probably just pre WW1. The first appearance of cars. The Imperial Cafe on the right.

The same view, but a little closer up. The early 1930s.
Background High Town is practically unchanged apart from the
new Lloyds Bank building to the left of the Buttermarket Clock.
Lloyds moved out of the Old House and presented it to the
City Corporation in 1928.

The early to mid 2010s. Cars have gone once again, High Town having been "pedestrianised".
Otherwise little has changed architecturally in nearly 100 years. The shops have moved on,
 though - the Imperial Cafe is no more, W.H.Dyer is forgotten, and the Capital & Counties
 Dining & Refreshment Rooms, to the right of the Old House, has become "Starbucks".
Barack Obama is President of the USA.

And a last look at the Old House in the context of Hereford, a view from 1815 (President of the USA - James Madison) and a triptych view of the City from 150 years later, the late 1960s (President of the USA - Lyndon Baines Johnson):

A watercolour of "Butcher's Row" from 1815. The three gabled building in
the centre is the present Old House, showing how buildings have been
demolished around it over time.

Clockwise from right top - the new road bridge (built in 1966), the glamorous modernity
of the newly pedestrianised "Eign Gate Shopping Precinct" and the Old House.
Quite what the Victorian Mrs Oatfield would have made of the orange mini-skirted
 Herefordette is anyone's guess....

Cigarette Card Public Schools

Following previous posts on the ubiquitous 1930s cigarette cards (two thirds of British men smoked in the 1930s/1940s, and every pack contained a card) and the Royal Navy, followed by the Royal Air Force, it's time for a look at another aspect of 1930s British life - the Public Schools.

W.D.&H.O. Wills produced an "Arms of the Public Schools" series in 1933/1934:

Eton College, the most famous of England's
public schools. A natural recruiting ground
for the Brigade of Guards, Military Intelligence
and (occasionally) His Majesty's Prisons.

Harrow School, Eton's principal competitor.
Old School of both, amongst many others,
 Winston Churchill and Stanley Baldwin.

While the Battle of Waterloo may arguably
have been won on the playing fields of Eton,
the game of rugby was certainly invented
on the playing fields of Rugby School.
Old school of Neville Chamberlain.

A more modern public school, but one
continuing the Waterloo theme, Wellington
is said to have supplied many of the more
technically minded subalterns of the VBCW,
principally for the mechanised and artillery arms.

One of the very latest public schools (1929)
Malvern College's relationship with
 that "notorious VBCW outfit"
within the Herefordshire VBCW,
 the Malvern Hills Conservators, is unknown.

One of the oldest, and obviously most
Anglican, of public schools - Christ's Hospital.
The Christ's Hospital Combined Cadet Force
must undoubtedly have formed one of the
famous Anglican "shock troop" units
during the VBCW.

King's School, Canterbury. Notwithstanding
its name, given that the school has been
situated for centuries within the boundaries
of Canterbury Cathedral, its Cadet Force
proved utterly loyal to "their Archbishop"
during the VBCW.

A notable omission from this series of W.D&H.O Wills cigarette cards was that ancient and central (to Herefordshire and the Herefordshire VBCW) public school - Hereford Cathedral School. Given the already noted presence of its upstart competitor, Malvern College, this must have been a minor irritation to the then headmaster of HCS, Dr. Crees. Thus, with a flourish and a little help from modern technology, we can rectify this unaccountable error:

Gaming Note : with a modest amount of Photoshopping, these "Arms of the Public Schools" cigarette cards can easily be transformed into presentable flags for a "Public School Army", or simply a CCF section of a larger force. Certain public schools cadet forces could arguably have served on any side within the VBCW (well, save probably for the Communists) and are therefore very versatile troops.

HEREFORD ON FILM (1930s)

Two British Pathe films of Hereford in the 1930s, all voiced in impeccable Received Pronunciation:

See HERE for a two minute "Pictorial" short from 1935 titled "The City on the Wye - Hereford". Good views of King Street, the exterior of the Cathedral, Church Street, the Old House and High Town, Widemarsh Street, the Coningsby Hospital, the Wye Bridge, the Victoria Bridge. Extras on Kilpeck Church and Holmer Church.

See HERE for an even shorter (but odder) film from two years earlier, 1933, titled "Hereford - A Little Bit of Old England", concentrating on 'the revival' of the ancient ceremony of 'beating the bounds'. Views of the Old House and High Town again, the Town Council and their banner, the Mayor, the Swordbearer and the "Liveried Men" of the Council, the frontage of the Butter Market with the City and County Stores (and Fred Burn the City Tailor's shop) adjacent, followed by "the bumping" (don't ask).

Notes:

(1). The Mayor of Hereford in 1933 was Mr EW Langford. This previous blogpost from the Bishops Broadcasting Service provides some history and still photographs of the City Council in the 1930s (and in the recent past) for comparison to the 1933 film.

(2). The scenes of High Town in both films can be compared to the stills of the VE Day celebrations in the same place some ten years (and much hardship) later, published in this previous blogpost.

Hereford High Town today (ish). The Butter Market is an ever present, as is Lloyds Bank to its right.
The former City & County Stores, to its left, is now an O2 Mobile Phone Shop, its fine brickwork
 now lost beneath cheap roughcast.

MARCHING THROUGH HEREFORD - VBCW "BUF CABINET"

From the bulging manila files of "Big X", Anglican spymaster and Chief of the Ecclesiastical Intelligence Service, Ludlow, emerges these VBCW BUF photographs:

The Leaders - the "BUF Cabinet"
Back Row, L to R - John H. Hone, Jack E.M.Atherley, John Thompson, Richard A Plathen, Robert Gordon Canning,
John W. Beckett, Bryan D.E. Donovan, Lt-Col.Charles S. Sharpe, William Leaper
Front Row, L to R - Alexander Raven Thompson, Eric Hamilton Piercy, Ian Hope Dundas, Oswald Mosley, Neil LM Francis Hawkins, Wilfred Risdon, William Joyce.

The Followers - Hereford VBCW BUF marching across Castle Green in
celebration of the capture of the Bishop of Hereford and the fall of the City.
 An early phase of the Civil War. It is likely that these troops took an active
part in the Battle of Ledbury as a component part of the "Three Counties Legion".

Notes

(1). perhaps surprisingly, the political structure relied upon by Mosley upon his accession to "the Premiership" at the beginning of the VBCW has not (as yet) been subject to a great deal of historical research. What can be said with confidence is that, while the existing outward structures were maintained (the House of Commons and Lords, etc.), real power was exercised, in tandem, by the King in person (supported by his devoted "Royalists") and Mosley and his BUF Cabinet (supported by his fanatical 'movement').

(2). Historians of the alt-universe (of self-styled "reality") argue that the second photograph is in fact of the East Ham BUF on 11th November 1936, on their way to lay a wreath at the local War Memorial. It is presently unclear when the first photograph was taken, but it is also likely to be 1936 (Joyce, for example, left the BUF in 1937). Historians of the VBCW, dealing of course with an entirely different time-line and arguing that such historical judgments are "as likely as a grocer's daughter becoming Prime Minister" place the BUF Cabinet photograph firmly in 1938 and point out that the topography of Castle Green is 'clearly recognisable' in the second photograph (albeit that its most notable feature, the Nelson Monument, is 'regrettably just out of shot').

THE HARRY POLLITT SONG

Harry Pollitt, General Secretary of the Communist Party of Great Britain
1929 - 1956 (with an unfortunate interruption, 1939/1941)

Recent posts on BUF History in the interwar period may have left readers suffering from a surfeit of black uniforms, stiff armed salutes and polished jackboots. The antidote? The Harry Pollitt song!

Harry Pollitt was General Secretary of the CPGB from 1929 until 1939, when he was forced to resign his position after breaching "the Party line" on the outbreak of WW2. Pollitt then supported Britain's Anti-Nazi struggle, publishing a pamphlet entitled "How to Win the War", but the Comintern's subsequent line (with the Molotov - Ribbentrop Pact in their back pocket, and then half of Poland as a result) was that "the war is an imperialist and unjust war for which the bourgeoisie of all the belligerent states bear equal responsibility". Stalin's line on Poland was that it was simply another "bourgeois Fascist state" that had been "eliminated", and that the war was "a robber war kindled from all sides by the hands of two imperialist groups of powers".

The "Party line" changed - whoops! - when Nazi Germany invaded the Soviet Union in 1941. 

Pollitt was then reinstated as General Secretary of the CPGB, remaining in that position until 1956, when illness forced him from office, and he became Chairman of the Party. Always a slavishly convinced Stalinist (he called the Moscow Show Trials of 1937 "a new triumph in the history of progress"), he became disillusioned with Kruschev's attacks on Stalin and his record, saying of his favourite Stalin portrait: "he's staying there as long as I'm alive". Pollitt died in June 1960.

The origins of the "Ballad of Harry Pollitt" are lost to history, but it may have started during the 1940/1941 period, and grown organically in the ensuing years. The precise tune we can leave to later (you have to know the words first!) but apparently the singing must be loud and lusty, there must have been a large amount of beer consumed, and it is best accompanied by marching around enthusiastically but somewhat haphazardly :

THE BALLAD OF HARRY POLLITT

Harry was a bolshie and one of Lenin's lads

Was foully murdered by counter revolutionary cads

Counter revolutionary cads, counter revolutionary cads

Was foully murdered by counter revolutionary cads

He landed up in heaven trembling at the knees

'May I speak to God I am Mr. Pollitt please

Mr. Pollitt please, Mr. Pollitt please,

May I speak to God I am Mr. Pollitt please'

'Who are you' said God, 'if you're humble and contrite

And a friend of Lady Astor, then OK. you'll be alright

Then OK. you'll be alright, then OK. you'll be alright

And a friend of Lady Astor, then OK. you'll be alright'

They dressed him in a nightie, put a harp into his hand

And he played the Internationale in the hallelujah band

In the hallelujah band, in the hallelujah band

He played the Internationale in the hallelujah band

They put him in the choir, the hymns he did not like

So he organized the angels and he fetched them out on strike

Fetched them out on strike, fetched them out on strike

He organized the angels and he fetched them out on strike

One day as God was walking around the heavenly state

Who should he see but Harry, chalking slogans on the gate

Slogans on the gate, slogans on the gate

Who should he see but Harry chalking slogans on the gate

They put him up for trial before the Holy Ghost

Charged with disaffection amongst the heavenly host

Amongst the heavenly host, amongst the heavenly host

Charged with disaffection amongst the heavenly host

The verdict it was guilty, said Harry 'That is swell!'

And he tucked his nightie 'round his knees and he floated down to hell

Floated down to hell, floated down to hell

He tucked his nightie 'round his knees and he floated down to hell

A few more years have ended, now Harry's doing well

He's just been made the People's Commissar for Soviet hell

Commissar for Soviet hell, Commissar for Soviet hell

He's just been made the People's Commissar for Soviet hell

Now the moral of this story is easy for to tell,

If you want to be a Bolshevik, you'll have to go to hell,

You'll have to go to hell, Yes, you'll have to go to hell,

If you want to be a Bolshevik, You'll have to go to HELL!"

Various versions of the Ballad exist, all with slightly different wording. For an English folk rendition ("My Darling Party Line"), check out Joe Glazer's version HERE. For an American take, check THIS LINK, courtesy of "The Limeliters". And if you want to see Harry Pollitt propounding the Party line at the General Election of 1945,  courtesy of British Pathe, you can see the man himself HERE.

BUF by BFI

Youtube, courtesy of the British Film Institute ("BFI"), has THIS FILM, some ten minutes long, of Mosley and the BUF (on 3rd October 1937) seeking to undertake a planned march from Westminster to Bermondsey: Mosley himself, flags and standard bearers, British fascists, female British fascists, a Scottish pipe and drum band, British communists/left wingers giving the clenched fist salute, mounted policemen, lorried policemen, lots of policemen....and a final segment on the "BUF Black House" in the Kings Road, Chelsea (complete with passing Norland nanny in uniform and pram). If nothing else, filmed evidence that being "on sentry duty" at the front entrance of the Black House must have been an extremely wearisome job.....

Some background on the 3rd October 1937 march can be found HERE, an extract from "Rebel Footprints" by David Rosenberg.

HOW CLOSE WAS CIVIL WAR?

Extracts from "Blackshirt : Sir Oswald Mosely & British Fascism" by Stephen Dorril, pps 404 - 405:

"With the crisis front-page news [on Thursday 3rd December 1936], Mosley was in Liverpool, where he was joined at the Adelphi Hotel by [William] Joyce [BUF Director of Propaganda] and [John] Beckett [BUF Director of Publications], who found him 'in a state of great excitement'. He claimed 'to be in direct communication with the Court. The King was strengthened by the knowledge of the support of his movement, and for this reason would accept Baldwin's resignation and call upon Mosley to form a government. Mosley later admitted that he had been in secret correspondence with Edward. He denied seeing Edward but he had a number of close contacts with the King, such a 'Fruity' Metcalfe [close friend of and equerry to Edward]. There was a feeling within the BUF that 'something was going on and that they were going to achieve power.'

Mosley detailed plans to Joyce and Beckett 'for governing without Parliament.' He 'strode about the room in excitement as he explained that millions of pounds would be available to fight an election in such a cause, and that as Prime Minister he could broadcast as often as he wished. This, he was certain, could not fail to turn the electorate in his favour.' There was then a telephone call and Beckett recalled that when Mosley replaced the receiver 'he turned to us and explained that he had received most important news from the Court. He apologised for speaking in cipher, but said he always used it because his calls were intercepted by the CID'. Beckett thought Mosley's secretiveness schoolboyish but was sure he 'really believed he was on the threshold of great power'.....

and:

"[On 5th December 1936] General Sir Ian Hamilton, former Commander-in-Chief at Gallipoli, who had seen Hitler secretly under cover of British Legion trips to Europe, told Baldwin 'there would be an ex-serviceman's revolution if the King abdicated'. Detective author Anthony Cox ('Francis Iles') heard from military friends of 'a conspiracy of young hotheads, junior captains in the Household Brigade, to take up arms against the Government and for the King and putting the Prime Minister under arrest.' Ceremonial guards outside Buckingham Palace were said to have been issued with live ammunition."

and:

"The King had 'a night of soul searching' [the night of 5th/6th December] about supporting a King's Party. 'In the end, I put out of my mind the thought of challenging the Prime Minister. By making a stand I should have left the scars of civil war'....The King [then] sent messages to Mosley of 'polite thanks for his offers of support' of which he had 'felt unable to take advantage."

and finally:

"The telephone call between Mosley and his royal contact proved to Beckett that the Leader was 'dangerously near the borderline between genius and insanity'. He knew the man [at Court] as 'a dilettante society friend of Mosley's, who lived in as fictitious a world of grandeur as Mosley himself.' Beckett had left Mosley 'convinced that he already believed himself in charge of the nation's affairs'. His 'powers of self-delusion had finally conquered his sanity. He could not realise that nobody except himself and the comical little group of ex-peddlers and humourless ex-officers with whom he was surrounded took him at all seriously'"

Notes:

(1). John Beckett (b.1894 -d.1964), together with William Joyce, left the BUF in 1937 after a falling out with Mosley. They then formed the National Socialist League together, but Beckett subsequently left the NSL in 1938, "disillusioned by Hitler and arguing that Joyce was being too extremist in his public anti-Semitic outbursts."

(2). althought not positively identified, the "man at Court...a dilettante society friend of Mosley's..." is very likely to have been "Fruity" Metcalfe, married to Alexandra Curzon (known in the 1930s as "Baba Blackshirt") but without great wealth, brains or family distinction himself.

(3). standard disclaimer : those reading this Blog for news of the "Very British Civil War" may well be entirely disorientated by this post. Never fear : it clearly refers to an alternative universe, where Edward VIII did not fight for his throne (particularly via his loyal lieutenants in Herefordshire) but instead cravenly abdicated and fled abroad.

1920s advertising poster for the Adelphi Hotel

The dining room of the Adelphi in the early 1940s

1941. Five years after Mosley's machinations at the Adelphi, and Liverpool is under sustained attack
from the Luftwaffe. The Adelphi (in background) has had a near miss.

December 1936. The nightmare of aerial bombardment is  - as yet - only a contingent future,
as Mosley plots an unconstitutional coup in an upstairs suite...