Category: Berkswell

“The Berkswell Murder”, 1845

On Wednesday 19th November 1845, Thomas Tranter, a 60-year-old farmer described as  living near Docker’s Gate in the parish of Berkswell, was found murdered in an outbuilding adjoining his home.

The door was locked from the outside and he was found face down in a pool of blood in the doorway, with a sack over his head and a blood-stained bill hook and axe lying next to him. Death was apparently due to a fracture of the skull, caused by a single blow from a blunt instrument, believed to be the head of the axe, which bore some of Thomas Tranter’s grey hairs. Mr Arthur Sargeant, surgeon from Meriden, declared that it would have been quite impossible for the wound to have been self-inflicted.

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V. J. Day in Solihull, 1945

V. J. Day, 15th August 1945, marked the day when the Second World War effectively came to an end as Japan surrendered and all hostilities ceased.

The Warwick County News, 18th August 1945, summarised local events with the headline “Neighbourly co-operation was the keynote of Solihull’s VJ-Day celebrations” and the observation that the day was marked by a “mood of quiet thanksgiving or in the exuberant relief of pent-up feelings according to age or nature.”

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Coronation Day 1937

Wednesday 12th May 1937 saw the coronation at Westminster Abbey in London of King George VI and Queen Elizabeth. The date had been chosen for the coronation of King Edward VIII who had become king on the death of his father George V in January 1936. Although Edward VIII’s abdication in December resulted in a new king and queen on the throne, the coronation date of 12th May was retained.

In Solihull, the event was marked by a three-day carnival, which ran into the Whitsuntide weekend, and many of the villages now in the borough held their own celebrations.

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Burleigh in Wartime, and beyond

“Burleigh in Wartime” was the title written in February 1940 by Clara Milburn on the first page of a soft-backed exercise book. After five months of war she had decided to write a day-to-day account of how she and her small part of the English countryside faced the trials and tribulations of a country at war. Extracts from what turned out to be 15 such exercise books were published in 1979 as Mrs Milburn’s Diaries: an Englishwoman’s day-to-day reflections 1939-45.

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23rd October 1918

Five men with a local connection died on 23rd October 1918:

  • Lance Corporal Harry Matthew Bradburn, 20th Battalion Manchester Regiment
  • Private Oliver Cranmer, 2nd Battalion, Royal Sussex Regiment
  • Corporal Frederick Alfred Johnson, A Battery, 115th Brigade, Royal Field Artillery
  • Shoeing Smith Frank Selfe, Z Battery, 5th Brigade, Royal Horse Artillery
  • Private John Howard Whittle, 1st/8th Battalion, Royal Warwickshire Regiment
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