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world War one

A large building with a blue sky.

Visit to World War One Gymnasium

By News

Judith, the Museum Manager and John, one of our Trustees had an interesting visit to Brampton in Cumbria on Monday.  John had heard on the grapevine that Brampton Community Centre was housed in an unusual historic building which it is said was the original Gymnasium for workers at HM Factory Gretna in World War One (the Devil’s Porridge Museum’s main focus is on this Factory and the 12,000 women who worked there).

Photos above show the inside of the main building today.

Judith and John managed to contact the people at the Centre and arrange for a guided visit.  The building is very impressive and certainly would have been an excellent gymnasium.  It is now used for woodwork and art classes.  The Devil’s Porridge duo were shown around by two representatives from Brampton and an interesting discussion took place about the building: where was it located in the War (Gretna?  Eastriggs?), when was it sold and transported to Brampton (1918?  1921?  1924?) and how was it transported?  We will continue to explore these ideas and see what our research yields.

Below: these photographs show the corridor and inside the rooms which are said to have been the changing rooms for the Gymnasium (you can still see a bench which ran around the edge of the room).

It certainly is a well preserved and interesting building as these photographs testify.  Our thanks to Brampton Community Centre for being so welcoming and helpful.

Below: this cupboard inside the building is certainly old, perhaps its lock will help us to date the building?

Below: photographs showing the building exterior including a photograph showing the building’s brick foundations.


Below: some photographs of the building’s interior.

Fascinating new HM Factory Gretna donation

By Collections blog

Jake Mitchell, a student at Annan Academy, volunteers at The Devil’s Porridge Museum at the weekend as part of his Duke of Edinburgh award.  This weekend, he looked at a recent object donation and wrote this blog for the Museum’s website about it.

This week we were gifted some very interesting objects from a lady whose grandparents both worked at H.M. Factory, Gretna. One of the objects was a Factory Rule Book owned by her Grandfather (his name and address in the Mossband section of the Factory can be seen at the top).

factory rule book

 

Amongst the general rules is one which states that spitting is banned throughout the Factory!  The First Aid rules are quite comprehensive (as might be expected, this was dangerous work!)

 

Also gifted to the Museum were photographs of the donor’s maternal grandmother and grandfather along with their biographical information.

William Henry Collins was born on 24 September 1894 in Colchester, Essex. He joined the Royal Engineers in 1914 and met Anne Smith in 1916 when he was stationed in Gretna. He married Anne Smith on 7 July 1917 in Southsea. They had 4 girls in Colchester  during their marriage. They moved to Beeston, Nottingham where he worked at Wilford Power Station. He died on 26 October 1981 in City Hospital, Nottingham at the age of 87.

Anne Smith was born on 21 December 1898 in Fraserburgh, Aberdeenshire. Her mother died in 1909 and she went to live with her father’s parents in Buckie. She met William Collins in Gretna where she was working at the munitions factory. She married William Henry Collins on 7 July 1917. They had four children during their marriage, moving from Colchester to Beeston where she lived until she died on 4 January 1997 at the age of 98.

We are so grateful for this generous donation which helps us to understand more about what happened here in World War One.

Gretna girls hockey team.

Girls hockey team at HM Factory Gretna in World War One

By Collections blog

A recent visitor to the museum was intrigued by this photo, which we have on display in our ground floor gallery.  It shows the Girls Hockey Team from HM Factory Gretna in World War One.

girls hockey team

The visitor wondered if one of the women pictured may have been Evelyn Perry.  Evelyn was appointed Physical Training Instructor at Gretna in 1917 as this page from the book ‘Challenge of Change’ recounts.

challenge of change

This is the comment that the visitor made:

The players in the photo were not named but one lady in the back row was wearing a deep yoked tunic – often an indication of a trained PE specialist and a small section of a brooch.  I rather dismissed her as being Evelyn as she appeared to be wearing the Dunfermline College of Hygiene and Physical Training brooch – see my version [below].  The top looks just visible.

However, on reflection, Evelyn was on the staff of Dunfermline College from at least 1905 – 1907 and may well have been given a brooch although she had trained at Chelsea, probably before brooches were given out [see text below for more information].

dumferline college brooch

dunfermline college

Looking at our records, we were able to find this description of hockey playing at the Factory, it is taken from a record of HM Factory Gretna’s Social and Recreational Department’s activities during World War One.

hockey at hm factory gretna

If anyone knows anymore about this, please do contact the museum as we are always looking to find out more about life here during World War One.

Isabella Dixon OBE

International Women’s Day: inspiring women of World War One

By Collections blog

Yesterday was International Women’s Day, a time to celebrate wonderful women so here is an account of bravery shown by two remarkable women during World War One.

Maud Bruce was from County Durham, aged 22 when she went to work at HM Factory Gretna (which the Devil’s Porridge Museum is primarily focused upon). She became a forewoman and was in charge of a women’s fire brigade unit in the factory.

Six months after her arrival at the plant, at 8pm on 22nd May 1917, a fire broke out in the gun cotton drying house where she was employed. In this section of the plant there were always large quantities of loose dry cotton lying about. Smoke began to appear out of one of the cotton drying machines, and within a few minutes, the room was filled with thick smoke. Flames began spreading rapidly to the layers of cotton inside the willower, as the machine was called. Maud (photographed below) climbed the ladder beside the machine, which was about 20ft. high, and cut away the burning cotton to prevent the fire from spreading, and by her cool action, the other girls were encouraged to operate the steam and water sprinklers, to extinguish the existing fire.


Her brave deed, therefore, not only halted the expansion of the fire, but also ensured that the rest of the girls carried out their fire fighting duty.

Isabella Dixon

On June 21st 1918, when she was 23, Maud was awarded the OBE by the Duke of Buccleuch, at Gretna she was described in a newspaper article as, “…a fine type of girl…”. The same article from 1917, describes another young woman called Isabella Dixon (photographed above) who was awarded an OBE at the same time as Maud, ‘for presence of mind and courage entering a burning room in an explosives factory and playing a hose upon the flames.’

Maud was one of the first people in the country to undergo plastic surgery. She lived to be 100 years old (photographed below in later life).

maud bruce in later life

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