On Friday 18 August the volunteers of the Southam Heritage Collection invite you to one of their regular coffee mornings at St James’ Church. For anyone who has not previously attended one of these events, as well as being a chance to catch up with friends, this is an opportunity to see some of the work and publications of the Collection, and to meet some of the volunteers. The Collection will also be open as usual from 10 am to 12 noon at Tithe Place. There follow below some reflections on the origins of this self-supporting charity.

Quite often significant things have a habit of starting in a low key and unrecognised manner and the totality of the end results may not be at all obvious. This is certainly true of the Southam Heritage Collection which was previously known as the Friends of the Cardall Collection and until just after the beginning of the twenty-first century was very much a private collection of historical documents and objects, only open to the public on a limited number of days each year.

We must go back to the year 1900 when John Frederick Cardall was born. Jack, as he was known, was the son of Jonathan Cardall who had served in the Army
before becoming a farmer, innkeeper, coal merchant, and a garage and taxi company owner. In addition, he was involved with the Boy Scouts, the Volunteer Fire Brigade and served as a Special Constable. An accomplished clarinettist, he also founded a dance band – not exactly an idle man. However when Jack left school during World War 1 he didn’t follow in any of the various footsteps of his father but found himself working first for British Thomson Houston, an electrical firm in Rugby, and then as a clerk for a firm of local solicitors. This latter role brought him into contact with journalists at the Southam Petty Sessions and he fell in love with the idea of becoming a journalist. He attended shorthand classes at Southam Convent, and following a very brief 6-week period in the Army when he was declared unfit for service due to having suffered polio as a child, he made it his life-time objective to become a fully fledged journalist.

Journalism developed Jack’s passion for writing and also brought him into contact with innumerable people who could and did tell him all sorts of stories about local life and the characters who were part of it. As a result, he decided during World War 2 to write some pamphlets about aspects of Southam’s past and, as they say, the rest is history.

The image shows Jack and Rene Cardall at their wedding in 1963

After World War 2 Jack followed in his father’s footsteps in the coal and taxi businesses and very actively in the music business as one of the most prominent local dance band leaders. All of these occupations brought him into contact with many people, and since he now lived in a large property in Warwick Road he had the space to store objects and documents which these people offered him due to his interest in local history. He continued to develop this collection until his death in 1976. His second wife, Rene, was equally passionate about local history, having been a junior school teacher, and she committed her life to developing the collection further right up to the early years of the 21st century. A decision was then taken to try to preserve this unique collection for posterity by taking it into public ownership, and so the Friends of the Cardall Collection was established.

 

Southam Heritage Collection is located in the atrium of Tithe Place opposite the Library entrance. We are open on Tuesday, Thursday, Friday and Saturday mornings from 10am to 12 noon. To find out more about Southam’s history, visit our website www.southamheritage.org telephone 01926 613503 or email southamheritage@hotmail.com You can also follow us on Facebook.