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The Twitchers Museum Adventure poster with a photo of four Twitchers books. The Kids in Museum's and Walker Books logos also feature.

The Twitchers Museum Adventure

By Events

12th – 25th February 2024

Join birdwatching detectives the Twitchers and explore the beautiful birds and amazing animals in The Devil’s Porridge this February half-term. The Twitchers Museum Adventure from Kids in Museums and Walker Books celebrates the release of Feather, the fourth book in The Twitchers series from bestselling author M. G. Leonard. Find the birds and make your own pledge to protect wildlife. Complete the activity sheet to receive your Twitchers sticker!

Design your own bird or animal sidekick and share your drawing on Twitter/X or Instagram with the hashtag #TwitchersMuseumAdventure and tag @kidsinmuseums for a chance to win one of five bundles of all four books in The Twitchers series. Find out more on the Kids in Museums website: https://bit.ly/TwitchersMuseumAdventure

Admission into The Devil’s Porridge Museum is required to take part in this activity.

Poster for a Free Kids Valentines Craft Workshop at The Devil's Porridge Museum on Monday 12th February 2024.

Valentine’s Crafts workshop for kids

By Events

Calling all little Cupids! Join us for our free Valentine’s craft workshop and make your own handmade decorations and cards.

Join us on Monday 12th of February from 3:30-4:30 pm.
Places are limited, book now to avoid disappointment.
This workshop is ideal for children aged 7 – 11 years old.
Book now on the ‘Book Now’ button on the right side of this page.

A poster for a Burns Night Supper event at The Devil's Porridge Museum. It reads "Friday 26th of January 2024 Arrival 6pm £12.50 Come along and enjoy an evening of Scottish Entertainment. Tickets on sale from 8th January at The Devil's Porridge Museum. Limited Spaces only." It includes photos of a bagpiper and haggis.

Burns Night Supper

By Events

Fancy treating yourself to an evening of Scottish entertainment with a traditional three course meal? Why not join us for our Burns Supper on Friday 26th January 2024 from 6pm? Tickets are £12.50 per person and are available from The Devil’s Porridge Museum. Places are limited!

 

Burns Night is a traditional Scottish celebration of the life and works of Scotland’s national poet, Robert Burns. It’s held on or around January 25th every year—Burns’ birthday—and it consists of a celebratory meal with haggis (a traditional Scottish food made with oats, sheep’s heart, liver and lungs), whisky, highland dancers, bagpipers and other performers.

It’s a great opportunity to learn about Scottish culture through food, music and dance! We hope you’ll join us at 6 pm on Friday 26th in The Devil’s Porridge Museum for this fun event!

Limited spaces.
Tickets are on sale from the 8th of January at the museum.

Eastriggs Commonwealth Week 2022.

By Events

Eastriggs the Commonwealth Village is coming together to celebrate Commonwealth Week from March 12th to March 19th 2022. A number of local organisations are coming together to put on an impressive array of activities over that period. Read more about all the events that will be happening below.

 

Saturday 12th March

Tractor Pull Challenge

10am – 12 noon and 2.00pm – 3.30pm

A Tractor Pull Challenge sponsered by SJ Barbers and Touch of Beauty will be happening at The Devil’s Porridge Museum. Why not come  and see how far you can pull it? There’s a £25 cash prize for both Ladies and Gents challenges.

Commonwealth Entertainment

7:30pm – 12:30am

At Eastriggs Social Club, featuring ‘Back2Back’ and Status Quo tribute Peter Kelly. Tickets £8 from the Club or The Devil’s Porridge Museum. There will be prizes for the best Commonwealth fancy dress!

 

Sunday 13th March

The Time Bandits

10am – 4pm

Learn all about life in World War One with living history performers The Time Bandits at The Devil’s Porridge Museum.

Booking online to visit the Museum is essential to avoid disappointment when we are busy. You can book your visit to the museum here: https://www.devilsporridge.org.uk/product/tickets

 

Monday 14th March

Meet the Curator

6pm – 8pm

There will be a  FREE open evening at The Devil’s Porridge Museum where you can meet Emma Gilliland, the new Curator, and enjoy tastes of the Commonwealth.

 

Wednesday 16th March

Look out for MyPod Youth Bus!

 

Friday 18th March

Quizaoke

Starts 7pm at The Wayside Inn.

Your host for the evening is Harry H. Could you be the Eastriggs Commonwealth Champion? Followed by traditional karaoke – who will be voted the best male and female singers? £60 in prizes.

 

Saturday 19th March

Eastriggs Historic Commonwealth Games.

12 noon – 4pm

Free admission and fun for all the family at Melbourn park!

Heinrich Himmler

Eastriggs man involved in the capture of Heinrich Himmler?

By Collections blog

We have received a really interesting inquiry and are looking for your help.

For several years, Chris Mannion has researched his grandfather’s connection to the capture of Heinrich Himmler (one of the ‘architects’ of the Holocaust, right hand man to Hitler and head of the SS) at the end of World War Two.  Chris has managed to discover a great deal of information and is going to use that information to write a book.

Himmler (front left) with Hitler.

Himmler was captured by a patrol made up of men from the 196 Battery, 73rd Anti tank regiment, Royal Artillery.

You can watch a video about Chris’s research here: https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/av/uk-37744100

Within the ranks of 196 battery was L/Bdr Thomas Steel, service number 14596001.

The only other information on L/Bdr Steel is the address he gave the regiment.  That address is, 2 Butterdales, Eastriggs.

Chris has photos L/Bdr Thomas Steel should be on (below), but sadly no method of recognizing him.

To the best of Chris’s current knowledge and understanding, he wasn’t connected to Himmler’s capture, but still he may have left stories, photos etc. so we are looking for people who may have known Thomas Steel to come forward.

This photo was taken late May 1945 in Germany.
It shows 196 battery, 73rd Anti-tank regiment, and it is highly likely L/Bdr Thomas Steel is on this photo.

Currently, all the information on L/Bdr Steel is as follows:

Rank Lance bombardier, service number 14596001, the address he gave the regiment was 2 Butterdales, Eastriggs. Of course, this maybe his parent’s address or another relative, a sister maybe?

He enlisted on the 6th May 1943. He joined the 73rd A/T regiment  in March 1944.

When the War ended, he was transferred to another regiment and was posted to India.

He was demobbed in 1947.

196 battery landed on Gold beach, Normandy on the morning of the 7th June 1944.

They fought in France, Belgium, the Netherlands and Germany.

No record of him ever being wounded.

Anyone with any information, date of birth, death, family, possible photos etc.

Anything at all would be welcome.  Please do email manager@devilsporridge.org.uk or phone 01461 700021 if you have any information.  We would love to be able to help!

 

 

Postcard of Gretna township in the past.

Old Postcards of Gretna and Eastriggs

By Collections blog

When HM Factory Gretna was built in WW1 they needed a place to house all of their workers, they came up with the idea to build two new townships near the Factory site. These two townships were Eastriggs and Gretna, many houses and hostels were built to house all of the workers during WW1 some of which you can see in the photo below of Dunedin Road in Eastriggs.

 

 

The photo below shows the temporary wooden huts which were eventually converted into proper houses using brick after the war built in Gretna along with some of the permanent  hostel buildings which have now been converted into houses.

 

 

Below is a photo of the girls reading room which would be used some of the 12,000 female workers who worked at HM Factory Gretna during their spare time. The interior looks very nice but some reports we have of girls who worked at the Factory say that it was very cold inside during the winter as there was no heating.

 

Past archive photo of The Rand, Eastriggs.

Old Postcards of the Local Area

By Collections blog

These old postcards show what life was like in these local towns and villages and how much they’ve changed. We do not have exact dates from when the photos were taken but they show a very different time.

 

 

This postcard shows the Scotch Express leaving Carlisle Train Station which as you can see looks very different in this photo than it does today.

 

The Central Hotel in Annan looks a lot different here. Shame that it has now fallen into disrepair. This postcard also shows how different the roads were back then with no road markings and the roundabout not yet in place.

 

 

This postcard shows what Powfoot looked like quite some time ago. The old sandstone house now being part of the Powfoot Golf Hotel.

 

 

This postcard shows The Rand in Eastriggs and what it looked like with all of the houses built for the workers of HM Factory Gretna and used as hostels. These hostels were all purpose built to house the workers of HM Factory Gretna during the First World War.

Photo of Annan Riding of the Marches.

Devils Porridge Museum Podcast

By News

Welcome to The Devils Porridge Museum Podcast!

 

The Devils Porridge Museum Podcast has been created as part of an inter-generational oral history project. The project is now available for you to listen to online.

 

Through conversations and interviews, our volunteers and others from the local community will be sharing their personal stories and memories with The Devils Porridge Podcast team.

 

This week on our podcast we chat to Sybelle, who is one of our volunteers about the Annan Riding of the Marches and the history of the event.

 

More episodes will follow over the coming weeks, so please come back and listen to more installments throughout the summer.

 

If you would like to get involved in the project to share your own stories and memories or if you would like to find out more about joining our production team please contact: Steven@devilsporridge.org.uk.

 

You can listen to the podcast below:

VE Day Memories

By News

The Devil’s Porridge Museum joined in the nation’s commemorations of the 75th anniversary of VE Day on Friday.  This event (which we participated in digitally) has brought forward some more memories and photos which we wanted to share with you.

The photograph below shows Ettie Wilsenham celebrating VE Day on Friday at her home in Eastriggs (the windows have been covered with red, white and blue fabric in place of a British flag which they weren’t able to source during lockdown).

Ettie was working in Eastriggs depot when the War ended, she actually took the call from the Brigadier and did a great job going round all the magazines to break the news to everyone that the War was over.

People working in the ammunition storage depot during World War Two.

Ettie has a lot of connections to the Museum: she was once one of our volunteers and she features in our display about the Eastriggs depot.  The story of her marriage also featured in our ‘Love in Wartime’ exhibition as recounted below.

Ettie joined the war effort aged 16 when she secured a job in Eastriggs Depot in 1942. While she was there, she met Arthur who was a soldier in the Ordnance Corps, assigned to guard the Grade 4 stores.

“Every so often when I was working at those stores, Arthur would slip me a bar of chocolate. What with the rationing and chocolate being so scarce, I was won over! We married in 1945 [on June 7th] after the war with Germany was ended.”

Thanks so much to Ettie and Ann for sharing this account and to Dot for organising for it to be shared with the Museum.

If you would like to know more about World War Two in this region, the following book from our online shop may be of interest to you:

The Solway Military Coast book

 

 

 

Illustration of a child dressed as a police women on a postcard.

Women’s Police Service at HM Factory Gretna

By Collections blog

Over the next couple of weeks, we’re going to be focusing on one interesting aspect of HM Factory Gretna – the Women’s Police Service.

This first post provides introductory information, then we’re going to take a look in more detail at some of the documents and accounts in the Museum collection.

During World War One, 12,000 women worked at HM Factory Gretna.  They were mainly young, unmarried women and the Ministry of Munitions felt responsible for them, taking several actions which they saw as being for the girl’s own protection. We might now view curfews, searches and the largest women’s police service in Britain as restrictive, but at the time there was a War on and the measures were seen as necessary.

All work at HM Factory Gretna came under the Official Secrets Act. There was large police presence, this building in Gretna was once the police HQ, it still stands and is now converted into flats.

The Devil’s Porridge Museum has several items in its collection and archive which relate to the Women’s Police Service.  There were over 150 members of this unit and they were, on the whole older, better educated middle class women who policed the younger, less educated, working class women who made up the majority of the Factory employees.  These young women were known as the ‘Gretna Girls’ although they came from all over Britain and worked in a Factory which stretched as far as Longtown.  For example, we know one female police officer was born in Braithwaite, Cumbria.

Members of the WPS outside the Women’s Police Barracks, Gretna in World War One.

The Museum archive includes documents about the training of the female police force and their uniforms, photographs of them and the buildings associated with them (one of which, the Police HQ in Gretna, still stands and is now flats).  An interesting document is a petition to Winston Churchill for improved pay.  This dates from 1918 when Churchill was Minister of Munitions and includes the signatures of lots of women employed in this role.  We are also fortunate to have a women’s police truncheon and WPS badge on display in the Museum.

Ministry of Munitions WPS badge from the Museum collection.

What did the women police do?  We know they inspected the girls as they entered and exited the Factory (for example one young woman tried to sneak in her knitting, another some cigarettes, one tried to steal some cordite).  They also policed the morals of the girls (breaking up a kissing couple on the railway platform, maintaining the 10pm curfew and inspecting the back rows of the two factory cinemas).  At the end of the War, some women remained in police service while others returned to their families or other employment.

That’s the end of Part One, Part Two coming soon.

If you’d like to know more about HM Factory Gretna and women in World War One, the following items from our online shop might interest you:

Gretna’s Secret War

Lives of Ten Gretna Girls booklet

https://www.devilsporridge.org.uk/product/munition-workers-poems

The Devil’s Porridge Museum Guidebook

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