Swavesey and District History Society – Reports for Jan/Feb 2024
Swavesey & District History Society
January 2024 meeting. Dr Caroline Shenton, former Director of the Parliamentary Archives at Westminster, spoke on “National Treasures: Saving the Nation’s Art in WW II”. The little-known story of how the priceless exhibits of Britain’s museums, gallery and library collections were protected and preserved. These included Old Masters, the Magna Carta, the Crown jewels, the Parthenon Marbles, rare books, numerous marble statues and hundreds of tons of national archives from the Public Records Office. Winston Churchill ordered that all would be stored at home because the risk of sending to Canada, for example, was too great. So, they were stashed in ingenious hiding places across the country including stately homes, tube transport tunnels, slate mines, castles, prisons and stone quarries.
By the late 1930s it was realised that Hitler’s army might soon race across Europe and Britain had to prepare plans against widespread damage and looting, first by bombing then by invading troops. A massive but covert effort was planned and quietly delivered mostly by a coalition of misfits, mild-mannered civil servants, high-profile public figures, social oddballs, inconspicuous scholars and others who discovered in themselves reserves of resilience and courage. On 1 September 1939 Hitler’s forces marched into Poland. Already, by 25 August the escape plan for Britain’s treasures had gone into action.
It took 5 weeks to build temperature and humidity-controlled brick sheds inside a slate quarry in Snowdonia while transporting the vast collection of the National Gallery to them. Despite two major rockfalls onto the brick sheds all came out safely in 1945.
Furniture, metalwork, porcelain and ivory from the V&A first went to Montacute House in Somerset then in 1942 it was moved to Much Markle in the Mendips. Paintings from the Tate Gallery went to Much Markle. Other V&A items went to the London underground, along with the Parthenon Marbles from the British Museum.
Several country houses stored numerous sculptures and many crates of monumental pieces of stonework from the British Museum including Drayton House and Boughton House, both in Northamptonshire. Treasures from Westminster Abbey also went to Boughton. Vast quantity of archives from the Public Records Office went to Haddon Hall in Derbyshire
The Chief Librarian of the National Library of Wales readily agreed to a rock tunnel being excavated under the main building to store thousands of British Museum books. The Domesday Book went from the National Archives at Kew to a women’s prison in Shepton Mallet. Items from the Houses of Parliament were placed underground at The Imperial War Museum. Precious paintings at Windsor Castle went into the vault in the on-site basement and other royal treasures were put into specially made underground tunnels there. One of the four original Magna Cartas was on loan to New York. At the outbreak of war, it was moved to the Library of Congress in Washington DC then at the end of 1941, when the USA entered the war, it was moved to Fort Knox.
February 2024 meeting. On a cold, wet evening 40 people heard Terry Crump talk about his motorsport activities over a 55 year period during which he has raced 2, 3 and 4 wheeled vehicles. Terry is a retired product design engineer who has lived in Swavesey for 47 years. In the early 1960’s he met some top American dragster racers along with Donald Campbell who was demonstrating his jet car Bluebird at Blackbushe Airfield. As a Stevenage schoolboy he helped a number of local World Record Holders throughout the 1970’s including Clive Angel, from Over, George Brown, Tony Driscoll and Adrian Reynard.
In the early 1970’s he first rode motorcycle sidecar for his father Vic Crump at the Brighton Speed Trials and developed it further as an apprentice at ICL until 1974 when he met the Duke of Edinburgh at a local Gold Award event. In 1975 he rebuilt and raced for a number of years, a Reliant powered Formula 750 racing car with a school friend, Bob Hampton. In 1979 he designed, built and raced in 1980 an electric three wheeled car made of paper composites at a national event at Donnington Park and came 13th out of 250. He was invited by Ciba-Geigy to design and build a 2nd composite three wheeler to attempt the Cyclecar World Land Speed Record using a Yamaha 250cc engine and gearbox. An air operated gearshift was added to minimise gear change timing. In October 1983 he broke the World Record at Elvington, York and the following year reduced the time again unofficially to 12.853 secs for a quarter of a mile at Santa Pod Raceway, after further engine development.
In 1989 he and his brother Andrew raced a Ford Capri, then went on to rebuild a 2,000cc Ford Escort Mk2 and Rallied it from 1993 to 1997. They then converted it for Speed Hillclimb and successfully raced it until the end of 2003. In 2004 he joined Lola Composites as the Manufacturing Engineer on the McLaren Mercedes SLR Supercar and in 2005 became Quality Manager on the A1 Grand Prix car project. In retirement he has encouraged his Grandson Archie’s interest in race cars taking him to Goodwood and Lydden Hill race meetings to help with his cousin Michael Moulder and an old race friend Russell Dawkes who compete with their Hillman Imp powered saloon car.
