From New York to Omaha beach
August 24, 2014
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
Confederate nest in Leamington Spa
August 20, 2014
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
AW 52
August 20, 2014
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
Clarendon Street Baptist Chapel
August 13, 2014
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
A 1940s People Carrier
August 8, 2014
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
Leamington’s First Velocipede?
July 9, 2014
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
Cloister Crofts Camp
July 9, 2014
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
