1940's Event - 12 May 2013.

Guards patrolling the new secret military base. Ssh!

Castle Bromwich briefly returned to wartime readiness on Sunday 12^th May 2013 with the return of the 1940's event at Castle Bromwich Hall Gardens. This time another enemy was faced; namely our Spring weather which still had strong elements of late Winter about it. Nevertheless both visitors and re-enactors packed up their troubles in an old kit-bag and smiled their way through, usually in 1940s costume!

Highlights of the event included a display of vintage military and private vehicles:

The home guard also showed up, ever vigilant against fifth columnists and spies:

C'mon Adolf if you think you're hard enough...

Private Pike guarding the bike.

To help us mark the 75th anniversary of the 'Dam-Busters' raid, a temporary war-room was set up. Our classroom was suddenly transformed into RAF Neethley, and visitors sat through a number of air-raid scenarios therein:

 
The RAF tracking options proved to be most effective:

Here's one we pranged earlier!

Needless to say the public were well prepared for any incursion from the enemy:

Everyone knew where they were:

The US Army Medics were on hand:

 The shops were still open:

 ... and our dedicated Land Girls carried on regardless.

 
Of course all problems were eventually solved by jolly decent brew-up:

In the meantine Peggy Skivvy was on hand doing the essential job of the laundry, and telling just about everyone about how she went about it:

 
Sadly the weather prevented me from filming her talk this year, so here's one I filmed earlier:

I did however manage to film some of the quality entertainment provided by Kevin Mack just before the heavens opened on us:

In what seems to be a habit at our 1940s events, everyone had a great time in spite of the weather. Smiling faces abounded everywhere, and the event was the talking point of the area for days afterwards. Thank you all for your support.

I would also like to thank all of the visitors, exhibitors, and re-enactors for providing the Gardens with an event that I strongly suspect will be one of the highlights of 2013.

Special thanks must go to Professor Carl Chinn for promoting this event so brilliantly on BBC Radio WM. It was an extremely generous gesture.

Again, where would this event have been without the stirling work of our volunteers? Huge thanks to everyone involved: You were all great. If you are intrested in helping to keep these historic gardens open for the benefit of future generations see our volunteers page on this blog, then please contact Sue Brain on 0121 749 4100.

STOP PRESS! More pictures available from this site!

The video and photographs were taken by Graham High and are licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 2.0 UK: England & Wales License.