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CURRENT
EXHIBITION
April 2010 - The Canal in Knowle
FORTHCOMING EXHIBITIONS
Details (where available) of
forthcoming exhibitions
10 September 2010 - Lady
Byron and her connection with Knowle
PAST EXHIBITIONS
A selection of recent past
exhibitions and outlines of their contents follows below
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Details of some recent past exhibitions |
Dorothy Ward - Panto Star
January - April 2010
Dorothy
Ward, star of pantomime and theatrical comedy was born in Birmingham and
once lived in Knowle. Her father was landlord of 'The White Swan' public
house in the late 1890s. The White Swan was situated where the NatWest
bank now stands. Dorothy was purported to be “The Most Famous
Principal Boy” ever. Perhaps not just famous but infamous might also
be applied to Dorothy whose theatrical life had an element of notoriety about
it. Come and see our exhibition to find out why!
The Revels
Drama Group – Entertaining for 60 years
The Revels Drama Group is celebrating 60 years of entertaining with an
exhibition, courtesy of Knowle Society Local History, in the History Centre
upstairs in Knowle Library. The exhibition can be viewed, free of
charge, at any time during library opening hours.
KNOWLE
LODGE ESTATE
Built by Bowser
Brothers Ltd
 
Knowle
Lodge was originally a large private house situated on the corner of Lodge
Road and Warwick Road.
This
exhibition follows the demolition of the house in 1939 and the development of
the housing estate that now stands on its grounds.
The
builders of the estate were Harold and Donald Bowser who lived locally and
built many houses in Knowle, Dorridge, Bentley Heath and Solihull.
Henry
Tonks
1862 – 1937
– Surgeon & Artist
(Image:
Wikimedia)
Henry was born in Solihull later moving with his family
to Packwood Grange which his father Edmund, a Birmingham business man had
built for his growing family. He
studied medicine and attained his FRCS in 1888.
During the same year he decided to fulfil his life’s passion for art
and enrolled in art classes eventually giving up medicine to become a renowned
artist.
With the outbreak of the First World War Henry put his
painting into abeyance in order to serve his country. He helped Gillies at the Queen’s hospital, Sidcup with the
beginning of plastic surgery and produced numerous remarkable pastels of
facial injuries to help with the multiple operations (photography was not yet
good enough for this purpose).
1915 he was a Red Cross Orderly in France and was
eventually commissioned Lieutenant in the Royal Army Medical Corps.
Whilst still in France in 1917 he was appointed Principal of the Slade
School of Art. 1918 Henry and John Singer Sargent were appointed official
War Artists. In June 1919 Henry
was sent to Russia to record the British alliance with the 'Whites' against
the Bolsheviks which made him the only official war artist to show the
internal conflicts in Russia. Henry painted numerous famous pictures of war
scenes both in France and Russia and our exhibition includes a selection of
these and his other totally different style of painting - the more nostalgic
and romantic.
Henry eventually returned to the Slade School of Art and
became known as “the most renowned and formidable teacher of his
generation.” Amongst his pupils
were Spencer Gore, Augustus John, Percy Wyndham Lewis and Rex Whistler to name
but a few.
Scouting
in Knowle
A timely exhibition following the 2007
centenary of Scouting
Mounted by the 1st Knowle
Scout Group and 4th Knowle Sea Scout Group
(The
Knowle Society was grateful to the Scouts for providing this material while the
Society's
access
to its own material was limited during library refurbishment)
A
CENTURY OF CURTIS'S BAKERY [2007]
CHESTER
HOUSE [2006]
The Building
1801 -The Beaufoys - Four Generations of Kimbells
The Thompsons
- Henry Blundell - The Pickerings
The 1970's Restoration
- The Library Today
The Knot
Garden - Local History Centre - Origins of the Name
KNOWLE
IN TRAFALGAR YEAR [2005]
The
Manor - The Church - Buildings - Transport - Health & Welfare
Law & Order - Education - Sport & Leisure
IMAGES
OF KNOWLE [2005]
Selection of
Photographs from the Archives
Scrap Books
- Parish Magazines
The Work of the Local
History Centre
PEACE
& REMEMBRANCE [2005]
V. E. Day Party in Hampton
Road, 1945
Last Days
of War - Nine More Years of Rationing
Some who
Served - V. E. Day - Personal Memories - V. J. Day
Those Who
Died - War Graves at Knowle - Remembrance
THE RED LION
[2005]
The Red Lion about 1900
The
Building - The Sign, Early References
The
Licensees - Colourful Customers - Scenes
from the Yard
Red Letter
Days - The Bowling Club - The Wartime Lion and After
AMERICAN
INTERLUDE - D-DAY [2004]
An
American Army Medical Unit in Knowle (1944)
Knowle Men and Women in
the Armed Services
Fire Fighting - Air Raids - The Home Guard -
Evacuees - Dig for Victory
First Aid - Rationing - Fund Raising -
Bakelite Ltd Research Laboratory
GUMLEY
WILSON, SQUIRE OF KNOWLE [ 2004]
Click picture to enlarge
Squire of Knowle -
The
Black Sheep of the Family - A charming man
A brilliant Latinist - Extravagant
& the ruin of his family
Flight to America to avoid a
debtors’ prison - The end in a pauper’s grave
In 1989 a group of London University students bought for £25
at a car boot sale in Ascot a solicitor's deed box labelled Guy Fleetwood Wilson - they fancied the box.
Sir Guy was a distinguished man and the nephew of William Henry Bowen
Jordan Wilson, who inherited the Manor of Knowle in the early 19th
century. He was often called Gumley
Wilson, after his estates in Gumley, Northamptonshire.
The deed box contains papers relating to the Wilson family, apparently
for use in the administration of Sir Guy’s estate, but including a postcard of
The Wilson Arms, Knowle, Warwickshire, through which the students
traced us.
Sir Guy died in 1941, a 90 year old bachelor, whose only
relations were a multitude of far-flung distant cousins.
He had added a codicil to his will, which left the disposal of his
residuary estate - the major part of it - unspecified, and which was therefore
dealt with under the intestacy laws. As
the cousins then put in a bid for their slice of the cake, the box contains a
large number of birth and death certificates, together with depositions which
had to be translated into a form acceptable to an English court in order to
prove their identity. The estate
took seven years to sort out.
Gumley Wilson was wildly extravagant and caused misery to
his family. He disposed of most of
the family pictures and silver and was forced to sell the Knowle Hall Estate in
1849, although he retained the Lordship of the Manor until his death in 1887.
Faced with a debtors’ prison, he bolted to America with his mistress,
but eventually returned. Ending
life with nothing but a few sticks of cheap furniture, he was buried in a
pauper’s grave in Dulwich Cemetery.
The papers in the deed box comprise letters, documents,
notebooks, etc. They include Gumley
Wilson’s death certificate, a letter in his own handwriting and several
documents in which his ruined family felt no inhibitions in expressing their
feelings about him in the frankest terms. Sir
Guy spent much time and money trying to buy back the family property - his
bitterness is all too plain. Judging
by the acerbic correspondence which flew back and forth Gumley’s heir was
little better - and at one point his French wife claimed to be pregnant in order
to acquire what remained of the family property, whether genuinely or not is
unclear.
This box of papers has recently been sorted by
Peter Court, who has done a first class job - including translation of letters
in very difficult handwriting from the French. Some of the most
interesting formed part of the Local History Centre display in the show cases (March to
May 2004). Resist the
temptation to smile. It was a family tragedy.
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