CARDALLS CORNER - January 2018 - by Chris Holding and Pam McConnell
Our new exhibition titled ‘All Our Yesterdays’ opens on Tuesday 9th January and will be available to view on Tuesday and Saturday mornings (10am to 12 noon) at Vivian House, Market Hill, until the end of April. To begin this New Year we are going ‘back to basics’ by creating a display featuring some of the [...]
CARDALLS CORNER - December 2017 - by Bill Pease
The arms and crest of Southam are familiar but how many of us know their origins and meaning? They were granted by the College of Arms to Southam Rural District Council on 19th May 1959. The red and silver of the shield are the basic colours of the arms of both Warwickshire County Council and [...]
CARDALLS CORNER - November 2017 - by Helen Morris and Len Gale
In the year 998 Aethelred (the Unready) gave some land which included Southam to Leofwine, the father of Earl Leofric of Coventry whose wife was the famous Lady Godiva. The description of the land still exists written in Old English in a Charter. The boundaries of Southam were carefully marked and remembered through the custom [...]
Cardalls Corner - October 2017 By Jenny Frith
Mop or Hiring Fairs started when, in 1351, Edward III passed the Statute of Labourers to regulate the labour market after the Black Death had resulted in dire shortages of labourers. They were held in the Autumn on or near Michaelmas Day in bustling Market Towns which had many nearby villages to attract both employers and employees. [...]
CARDALL’S CORNER - September 2017 - By Linda Doyle
Last year was the 140th anniversary of Ladbroke village school being built which corresponds with the Victorian requirement to make education something that all parents were obliged to provide for their children. Whatever their standing in life education was now compulsory, plus it had to be paid for! This was not exactly welcomed as it took away [...}
CARDALL's CORNER - August 2017 by Alan Griffin
Walking the turnpike road towards Fenny Compton on a hot August morning in 1848, James Read pondered some remarks addressed to him months earlier following a case at Southam Magistrates’ Court. The phrase ‘Somebody should pay dear for this’ had stuck in his memory. Read was the Southam Division sergeant in the Knightlow Hundred Police Force and in [...]
CARDALL'S CORNER - July 2017 By Linda Doyle
In the late 18th / early 19th Century it is estimated that Southam had 15 pubs operating at the same time. Today, Southam has just four remaining public houses, but each of those four pubs boasts a historical background as long as the arm that raises your pint of beer! During the 17th Century there were [...]
CARDALL'S CORNER - June 2017 By Alan Griffin
Many English fairs have their origins in Medieval times during the reign of King Henry III. The Benedictine monks of Coventry Priory were granted a market charter for their Southam manor in 1227. They subsequently received grants for fairs on St Peter and St Paul’s Day (June 28), St George’s Day (April 23) and on the Feast of St Leger (October 2). [...]
CARDALL's CORNER - May 2017 By Linda Doyle
Southam has always been known for its wealth of public houses, which for years numbered as many as fifteen at any one time, and once catered for a population of one public house per 60 inhabitants of the town! However, it makes a little more sense when you realise that from early mediaeval times, Southam has [...]
CARDALL'S CORNER - April 2017 By Linda Doyle
Produce from the Warwickshire countryside has been gathered for centuries both as a supplement to for the diet and to sell. For poor people, free food from the verges and hedgerows was essential, and it came in the form of elderberries, blackberries, crab apples, damsons and much more. Farmers deliberately planted the Warwickshire Drooper plum [...]
CARDALL’S CORNER - March 2017 By Linda Doyle
The original town centre of Southam has changed for many reasons over the years, but the most abrupt and sweeping changes have been caused by fires. Although not on such a scale as the Great Fire of Warwick in 1694, the reason a fire started and spread in Southam was no different, and the result [...]
CARDALL’S CORNER - February 2017 By Jenny Frith
Until recently, I thought Pip Squeak and Wilfred were (only) cartoon characters from the 1920/30s. They were on a comic strip in the Daily Mirror newspapers children’s column from 1919 right up until 1956 and, in the early days, also in the Sunday Pictorial. Pip was a dog, Squeak a penguin and Wilfred a rabbit. [...]
