As a result of the Spanish Civil War, over 4000 children, some only just over the age of six, were evacuated from Northern Spain to Britain in 1937. Suffering extreme hardship, violence, imprisonment without trial, and widespread poverty under the Franco regime, for the families of the Basque evacuees life had become an endless struggle … Read more
Elizabeth Anne Galton was a Victorian gentlewoman, the eldest of six daughters and three sons born to a wealthy Quaker banking family and related through her mother to the Darwin family. She was not a feisty high-achiever, explorer or philanthropist, but she played a significant role for future historians at least in recording her memories … Read more
In October 1940, a fresh-faced young American named John Buccellato, just out of his teens, enlisted in the United States Army Infantry. His parents who were middle-class Sicillian immigrants lived in an apartment block facing Central Park in New York City. His mother was a milliner. Within two years ‘Butch’ Buccellato found himself in … Read more
The photograph to the right, taken in Leamington in 1865, is of former crewmen of the Confederate naval ship, the Shenandoah. What circumstances brought these sailors to Leamington at a time when fellow Americans were celebrating the ending of the Civil War? Four years earlier, the Confederate President, Jefferson Davis, sent his representative, James M … Read more
Long before Concorde went into service and as long ago as 1943, the Coventry firm of Sir W G Armstrong Whitworth developed an experimental, tail-less jet aircraft, the AW52 which became known as the Flying Wing. This aircraft had no fuselage or tail section and was essentially a large fixed wing powered by two Rolls … Read more
I was recently in Clarendon Street watching the demolition of the old chapel, originally known as the Free Baptist Chapel. The construction came about when a group broke away from the Warwick Street chapel, ostensibly over the lack of provision of a school. The new chapel cost some £2, 098 and was opened in June … Read more
When I was a young lad growing up in the nineteen- fifties, my father was a baker in the small Warwickshire town of Southam. In 1947 he had purchased the old windmill and the bakery business that went with it and my two brothers and I moved in to the small cottage that went with the … Read more
As many of us begin dusting off our bikes for a burst of spring fitness, we don’t usually give much thought to cycling’s early days, or how cycles came to be made. Many of the early models were very much a local product but still hard to come by. In 1837, the young John Charles Manning was desperate … Read more
Local residents Graham Cooper, Michael Wills and Mr Murray all have memories of a Military Camp on the site of the present North Leamington School playing fields, between Kenilworth Road and Cloister Crofts. Access to the camp was by gates on Kenilworth Road, where until recently traces of the gateways could still be seen in the hedgerows … Read more
Contact the Secretary, Margaret Rushton: secretary@leamingtonhistory.co.uk
July 22, 2026
June 9, 2026