A Zeppelin Over Yarwell

Receiving our award  in  July at Sywell Aviation Museum.

 Apart from putting all our research into a book we also have to finish the website, which is the job for Mike.

Mike is on the right of this photo.

A Zeppelin Over Yarwell

We have mostly finished working on the exhibition and were very pleased to have been award the top Heritage Community Award in July for the project.  However people are still bringing in information to us, all of which will be included in the book which we will be publishing in due course.

This lovely little box was posted out to Charles Simmons who served in the Northamptonshire Regiment. He was injured by shrapnel in France in 1916. He was transferred into the Army Labour Corps in 1917 and was discharged on April 8th 1919.

The photo below is of horses in  Yarwell which was reputedly posted to Charles while he was still in the army.

A Zeppelin Over Yarwell

The exhibition was formally opened by Air Vice-Marshall Wawrick Pike Retd. to which there was an incredible turn out by people from the six villages and  those from  further afield.

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A Zeppelin Over Yarwell

 Just as we had finished laying out and displaying all the photographs and artefacts I had a phone call from an old man called John Lock who was born in Nassington and went to school in the village. He told me that he had some interesting medals and drawings that were done by his father during  WWI. They are mostly pen and ink humorous  drawings, but of a high standard.

It would seem that John Lock's  father Arnold Victor Lock emigrated to Canada in 1910. At the onset of WWI he enlisted into the army and became a Regimental Sergeant Major in the Canadian Forces.

He was working on railway construction at the front when the sidecar of the motor bike in which he was riding hit a pocket of gas and damaged his eyes. He was eventually discharged and returned to England to live in Nassington.

Currently all the drawings are in plastic folders but I am going to purchase some Miramex ones, so that the drawings do not incur further damage. We will not be displaying the originals but be taking photographs of them for display. I hope to meet John again as he was full of very interesting information about the village.

A Zeppelin Over Yarwell

We have put up a lot of stories about building the

Zeppelin but we also worked with Nassington  Primary school on our WWI project.

They have been looking at old school records to find out what happened in the school during WWI.
They found that the punishment book was the most exciting because they learnt which soldiers were naughty at school. They discovered that a punishment could be up to six whacks on the hand with a cane. They were surprised to learn that the Northamptonshire Regiment came to assembly and showed the children a bomb! The children did not think that a bomb would be allowed in school today.

     The children also wrote and designed a leaflet using information that they had          gained from the school log books. We have distributed the leaflets around          the area.              

Some of the children learnt to knit mittens, just as the children did during WWI, when a large number of mittens were sent out to the troops.                                      

Zeppelin Over Yarwell

We are nearly there. The Zeppelin is in its final resting place and Mike has put up the sign.

On March 6th 1916  John Coleman Binder  in Oundle was called out for duty at 11.15 pm because zeppelins were in the area. He heard a zeppelin but did not see it. One of the other men also on night duty heard an explosion in the distance.  On the following day Coleman Binder learnt that Zeppelins had sailed over the Eastern counties along the east coast but the Zeppelins got no further west than Wansford.

This might have been the occasion when a bomb was dropped somewhere above Wansford.

On Friday 19th April 1918 Zeppelins raided again this time dropping a bomb which fell into a wheat field opposite the Yarwell/Nassington cemetery. The explosion was so load that it could be heard in Oundle 10 miles away. The bomb crater is still visible in the field.

A Zeppelin Over Yarwell Continued.

Since we last posted a blog about this project we have been working very hard to compete the exhibition in time for its opening in May. We raised the Zeppelin which looks more like a giant slug.

Here we are putting up the fishing line which will hold the Zeppelin. We had to attach eight lines onto the beams on either side.







Then with the help of adults and children we began to slowly raise it up.
I was quite nerve racking since we  were worried that we might drop the Zep as we now call it.

It is now up and if we open the big barn doors it sways gently in the breeze.

In the meantime our research into the families and the effects the war had on them continued.