RADWINTER RECORDER’S ANNUAL REPORT 2004-2005

Funding
We were successful in our application for two grants for our Oral History Project. The Rural Community Council of Essex gave us £325 from their Essex Community Hub Fund and Uttlesford District Council gave us a Leisure & Cultural Grant of £300.  More recently we have been successful in our application to Home Front Recall and have received £4,700 to organise an exhibition of World War II memorabilia to commemorate the 60th anniversary of the ending of the Second World War.
We were unsuccessful, however, in our application to British Telecom for an internet-ready PC.

Oral History Project
With the first two grants we purchased two sets of mini-disc recorders and a CD transcriber to record and transcribe memories of Radwinter current and former inhabitants so as to build up a permanent and developing oral archive of Radwinter life and times. Part of the Home Front Recall grant has also been used to purchasing an Olympus DS-2200 digital voice recorder which is capable of recording at broadcast quality in stereo and sending its recordings directly to a computer for the production of CDs. The recordings and transcriptions are being made using Essex Record Office (ERO) guidelines and will be deposited in the ERO Essex Sound Archive and the Radwinter archives so that future historians and all interested in local history can obtain a permanent and growing account of life in Radwinter as it has developed. The CD recorder and transcriber will be used for copying CDs so that we can make CDs on specific subjects available to the public.

Radwinter at War Exhibition
Thanks to the Home Front Recall grant, we are staging an exhibition of World War II memorabilia in Radwinter Village Hall from Saturday, May 28th to Bank Holiday Monday, May 30th.

As part of the celebrations, there will be a quiz on World War II in Radwinter Parish Hall exhibition on Friday, May 20th, at 7.00 for 7.30 pm and are inviting teams of six, or individuals who are willing to be assigned to a team, to take part. Those interested should contact Graham Schneider on 01799 599184.We will also be making the exhibition the focus of sound recording and photographic projects leading to the publication of a book Radwinter at War, a sister book to our Millennium publication, Radwinter 1900.

Radwinter Plan
In conjunction with the Countryside Agency, Radwinter is conducting a household consultation exercise to elicit views on the future of Radwinter and to produce a plan. The local history recorder is taking an active part and, amongst other things has produced a potted Radwinter History for the Plan. It is appended to this report

Karl Weschke
Parish Clerk, Ray Jones, brought to our attention a series of pencil drawings in a shed belonging to 3 Church View. They are said to have been drawn in Radwinter by a German prisoner of war and was believed to have once been part of the wooden wall of a POW hut, subsequently used by a previous occupant of 3 Church View, Mr Cyril Richardson, to build the shed.

The recent exhibition of paintings by former Radwinter POW, Karl Weschke, the foremost artist of the Cornish school, and his subsequent death, began speculation that the drawing might have been his work. I wrote to Saffron Walden Museum, where we originally thought that the drawing had been transferred. They replied that they didn't have it but did have a clay sculpture produced by an ex-Radwinter German POW. The Museum subsequently told me that the sculpture depicts a seated man with a child crying on his leg. Inscribed on it are the words 'Deutchland 1946 Her F Wafiakt', presumably the name of the artist. They told me that they had one other item relating to Radwinter during the Second World War- a pair of leather boots thought to have belonged to a German POW. The Museum is hoping to be able to loan both these items to Radwinter for the duration of the WW II exhibition.

Although principally known as a painter, Karl Weschke had begun his artistic career as a carver. His talent for carving was first encouraged at Watten - the highest security prisoner of war camp in Britain - by the chaplain, and this determined him to be an artist. His paintings now fetch a very high price.

It is clear that there may have been more than one artist at the Radwinter POW camp and it is probable that the drawings formerly at 3 Church View are nothing to do with Weschke. However, we are keen to ensure their preservation and the landlord, Miss Claudia Servern, has kindly agreed to let us remove the drawing and has also generously agreed to meet the cost of repair to the shed. The drawings will be on display in the exhibition.

Radwinter Reredos
The local history recorder has made a computer presentation on the Radwinter Reredos from the booklet he prepared earlier on the same subject. This was used to give a presentation to the Saffron Walden Historical Society and he will be make a further presentation to Hatfield Regis Local History Society on 10th May.

The Wover
We wrote to the Institute of Archaeology in Oxford regarding the origin of the name Wover, for the pond along the walk from the church to Radwinter Hall. A series of medieval fishponds is being researched in Radwinter and local people refer to one of the still visible ponds as “the Wover”. An expert once said that this is a Saxon name for a pond. However, Margaret Gelling, the leading expert on English place-names, said that there was no Old English word resembling ‘wova’ for a pond. The nearest name she could think of was the river Waver which flows into the Solway Firth and which probably means winding stream’ which she thought hardly seemed appropriate for a pond. However, as we know that the Pant was at one time far more substantial, supporting a Mill and barges coming upstream from the Blackwater, it could be the original name for the stream that was left behind when the fishponds were separated from the Pant. (Later research has shown that there is a modern German word Wovor which means “before or from which or what”. This name could well indicate that the Wovor would have been the first, header pond, in the series of medieval fish ponds and would owe its origin to one of the Germanic tribes who settled in Britain and contributed to Old English.)

Radwinter Archives
Indexing
There has been further progress on the Radwinter Archives. This is being done directly onto an Excel spreadsheet. Roger Mance from Greatford Cottage, Stocking Green, who is producing a history of Stocking Green, is helping the local history recorder with the project and we have already indexed over 500 items.

Transcriptions
One of the most useful items in the archives, after the parish magazines and the Parish Council minute book, is a foolscap manuscript book of notes made by former Radwinter History Recorder, Dick Lloyd, largely from interviews with Radwinter inhabitants who have long since passed away. It has been time consuming to trawl through the book for all references to a particular subject. Radwinter Resident, Mrs Muriel Muncaster has kindly agreed to transcribe the book, which will make it easier to read and index and eventually we hope that it will be searchable by computer.
Similarly, Mrs Wendy Rowley has kindly agreed to transcribe notes made by Mrs Pamela Pratt. We are most grateful to Mrs Muncaster, Mrs Rowley, Mrs Pratt and Mr Dick Lloyd for their dedication in ensuring that Radwinter memories are not lost and are made readily accessible to future generations.

Radwinter Harvest Camp
I have been in correspondence with Mr Bernard Slatter and Mr Frank Whitehead who as schoolboys stayed in the Radwinter Harvest Camp during the war to help bring in the harvest. Information on the camp is still coming in but and interim article with photographs is appended.

Miss Radwinter
We received and enquiry from a Mr Mike Porter who is researching the novels of Madeleine Kent, the author of I married a German (1938) and The Isle of the Innocent (1945).She had a character named Miss Radwinter in the second of those books. The first book details her escape from Germany with her husband "Hans" before it became impossible to do so. The second is a novel that Mr Porter believes draws heavily on her experiences in Dresden and her admiration for a Jewish musician she might have known in Germany. Madeleine Kent was born in Hatfield in 1907. Her publishers thought she might have died in the early 50s. She was known to be living in Suffolk whilst ill with cancer in 1953.The portrayal of Miss Radwinter is not particularly sympathetic but Mr Porter is extracting the reference to her from the book in case they jog the memory of any Radwinter residents as to why Madeleine Kent chose that name.

Family History Research
Radwinter resident, Stan Sutherland, has transcribed all the births, banns, marriages and deaths in the Radwinter parish registers. He has let the Radwinter Society and the PCC have copies. These include The Registers from 1813 to 2004, searchable on Excel spreadsheets and a PDF copy of Browne’s Transcripts of the Registers from 1638 to 1812.The latter is provided with a name index to facilitate name searches.

I have corresponded with a number of enquirers researching their family history and Stan Sutherland’s CDs have been invaluable for this. We have written to thank Stan for this excellent work and his generosity in sharing the information.

Radwinter’s ‘Ideal’ Village Centre
An exhibition was held in the church on the Radwinter village centre and how a disastrous fire in 1874 enabled the centre to be rebuilt in accordance with the social and visual aims of the Arts and Crafts Movement to become the ‘Ideal’ Village Centre that it is today. A booklet was published to support the exhibition, extracts from which are shown below. A number of large estates exhibited groups of estate houses for their workers, carefully built in the handcrafted style of the Movement but these did not reflect the whole living ideal behind it. This remarkable experimental exercise in Radwinter was born out of a tragedy 26 years earlier on 1st May 1874 and through the foresight and fortuitous partnership between a generous Rector, Rev. Fred Bullock (1840 – 1916) and a visionary architect, William Eden Nesfield (1835 – 1888).

Michael Southgate. Radwinter Local History Recorder
Further information on many of the subjects briefly described here can be found on the Radwinter History Website: www.radwinterhistory.org.uk