These stories supplement the very popular Clevedon Military History Trail which I produced in collaboration with Discover Clevedon a few years ago. You can download a free guide and map for the walk here.
(1) Clevedon's Bristol Blitz Hero - Archie Hancock (1942) Amongst the fatal casualties of the infamous April 11 1942 Bristol Good Friday Luftwaffe raid was a fireman from Clevedon, Archibald Hancock. He was one of eight fireman killed that night. The total loss of life was 180 civilians killed, including 40 Civil defence workers - a category which included Fire Guards, Fire Watchers, Air Raid Precautions (ARP) Wardens and Firemen. Full story here.
(2) Clevedon's War Memorial (1923) On Saturday, the 17th March 1923 flags and bunting adorned many of the houses in Old Church Road, Queens Road, Sunnyside, Albert Road, Six Ways, Hill Road, Wellington Terrace and on the approaches to Lady Baye. Householders had been asked to adorn a procession which would mark the 'opening' of Clevedon's War Memorial. Full story here.
(3) The Oaklands Red Cross Auxiliary Hospital, Clevedon (1915-1919) The Oaklands Red Cross Auxiliary Hospital, which was situated directly behind the aforementioned Green Beach, was set up in a private summer residence offered up by the owners (Mr and Mrs Ernest Wills) after Clevedon had been designated as a convalescence base under the jurisdiction of the 2nd General Hospital, Bristol. Later, the Oaklands Hospital was affiliated to the Beaufort Military Hospital in Bristol - indeed over 25% of the 3,500 men rehabilitated at Clevedon, came from that particular facility. Full story here.
(4) Clevedon's own Lancashire Lads (1915) One day in May 1915, twenty or so young women from Clevedon took an excursion to Tidworth in Wiltshire. Their trip was not without purpose, for it is no coincidence that men from the 56th Infantry Brigade had moved to Tidworth to complete their military training having spent three months in Clevedon from January of that year. Full story here.
(5) Yanks in Clevedon (1943-44) In December 1943 a U.S Army jeep appeared on the Six Ways interchange in Clevedon. The occupant, Major Barney Oldfield, and his driver, Corporal Max Shepherd, were scouting for 'a village site in the West Country' which would take about 700 men. Right in front of the GPO exchange on Six Ways stood a man in a top hat and tails wearing a morning coat - rather formal for a vacation type seaside town thought Oldfield who nevertheless stopped his vehicle and approached the man in question. Full story here.
(6) Starfish sites near Clevedon (1940-44) Although the turf covering has gone, the blast shelter and generator house at Kenn Moor is still intact. The blast wall in front of the main entrance has been removed but the one facing onto the QF field is in relatively good condition. The structure has two rooms - the first for personnel and the second (on the left in the picture above) for a generator. As an aside, there is a vast badger sett directly adjacent to the building - which presumably extends underneath the concrete floor. Full story here.
(7) An English Parish Church - Crucible of Military History Unable to venture far because of the current pandemic lockdown restrictions, I thought I would take a closer look at the church of Walton St Mary in Clevedon which is a few minutes walk from my home. English parish churches are crucibles of military history, and this one is - I suppose - fairly typical. Armed with a list of the Commonwealth War Graves for St Mary's I set out to see what I could find. Full story here.
(8) Clevedon's Victorian Gun Battery In the late 1850s a wave of anxiety swept through the British military establishment. The letters page of the London Times was awash with concerns about Britain's vulnerability to foreign invasion. The letter writers had a point - the British Army and the Royal Navy were sorely stretched in defending the Empire and were engaged in a series of colonial and foreign wars. Indeed in a single decade the British had taken on Czarist Russia, an Indian insurgency and most notably the Qing Emperor in China, a country with a population of 500 million. Full story here.
(9) What the Centenary of the 1918 Armistice meant for Clevedon, North Somerset At 11:00am on Sunday, 11th November 2018 a maroon was fired from the end of Clevedon Pier as part of a moving service of remembrance. This has been an annual event (with some breaks) since 1918 when Captain Rowles – the piermaster at the time - fired two rockets upon hearing news of the signing of the Armistice on the morning of the 11 November 1918. Full story here.
(10) The Clevedon Blitz - Night of 4th and 5th Jan 1941 Today the only aircraft sounds I hear above my house are holiday flights banking over the Severn Estuary before heading South towards the sun. However, during the Second World War the sky held a very real danger as German bombers followed the same route travelling in the opposite direction. Between 1st Sept 1940 and 18th May 1943 the town suffered 16 raids - all 'overspill' from attacks on Bristol, Bath and Cardiff. Full story here.
(11) Gettysburg connection in Clevedon, England Ten minutes walk from my home in Somerset, England there is an interesting reference to the Battle of Gettysburg. It can be found on a Durbin family gravestone in the cemetery adjacent to St Andrew's Church, Clevedon. The church is an idyllic location overlooking the Severn estuary in countryside not dissimilar to the field in Pennsylvania, USA where one of the family died on a hot summers day in July, 1863. That person was Fred Durbin who, at the age of 21, had joined the Union Army of the Potomac at a Recruiting Station near the Manhattan side of the Brooklyn Bridge in New York City. Full story here.
(12) The Woodspring Bay Wrecks (1944) At low tide two Second World War era shipwrecks are visible in Woodspring Bay, to the west of the village of Kingston Seymour. Indeed they are visible for walkers covering my Clevedon Military History trail which can be found here. Although the coast is not easily accessed in direct proximity to the wrecks, I had the pleasure of spending a day with three local farmers who share my passion for history and were an encyclopedia of knowledge about the impact of the war on this fascinating spot on the North Somerset coast. Full story here.
