Page 156 - Mercian Eagle 2013

Friends of the Mercian Regiment Museum (Worcestershire)
The Mercian Regiment Museum (Worcestershire) which has its exhibition Gallery inside the Worcester City Art Gallery and Museum on Foregate Street, Worcester, and a store and offices in the local TA Centre (Dancox House) in the Lowesmore area of the city is about to reinvigorate
its dormant Friends organisation. If you
are serving with The Mercian Regiment or have served with The Worcestershire and Sherwood Foresters Regiment or, before that, with The Worcestershire Regiment, please join and thus support the activity of the museum which preserves your history and heritage. Individual membership,
which is not confined to ex-members of
the Regiments in question, costs £15 per annum. Application forms can be obtained from Major Bob Prophet, Secretary, Friends of The Mercian Regiment Museum, Dancox House, Pheasant Street, Worcester WR1 2EE or telephone 01905 721982 or e-mail museummercian@btconnect.com.
The museum houses a collection of weapons, uniforms, medals, equipment, memorabilia and archives dating from the late seventeenth century to the present day. The collections expand mostly as a result
of gifts so, if you have any items of uniform or equipment which you no longer want, please contact the curator, John Paddock (01905 721982 Monday to Thursday) before you throw it away. The museum is particularly interested in badges, medals and ephemera; this means letters from foreign service, particularly from those on active service, newsletters, invitations to
regimental events, maps or, indeed, any handwritten or printed paper that casts
light on the history of The Worcestershire Regiment and their successors. Before you dispose of anything at all, please contact the curator.
From next year,
the Friends will have
two annual events.
First, an AGM when
the curator will talk
about the museum
activity in the previous
year and recent
acquisitions and
objects of special
interest from the store
will be available for
inspection; at the
second meeting,
a more formal
lecture on a topic of
wider museum interest will be delivered. Newsletters will be published at least twice a year (and the recent one will be sent to those joining now) to keep you up to date on what is going on and to tell you the results of research on the collections. It is hoped to link these meetings to the annual First of June and Gheluvelt commemorative events when former members of the Regiment converge on Worcester.
As a result of an appeal in the last newsletter, the museum has received a donation which has enabled us to purchase a Brown Bess musket of the Napoleonic period which was the weapon used in the late eighteenth century and the first part of the nineteenth century. The photograph shows the donor, Roger Christian, and the Chairman of the Museum Trustees, John Lowles, with the new acquisition.
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Jane Taylor have been sorting, conserving and cataloguing items in the reserve collection.
The Trustees are very grateful to Mrs Sue Kirchner, daughter of the late Colonel TJ Bowen MC, for giving the museum first refusal on a very special pair of medals from her father’s collection. They are the Naval and Military General Service medals to Thomas Robson
of the 29th Regiment which were bought with the help of a grant from the DCMS Victoria and Albert Museum Purchase Grant Fund. Robson was born in Durham and enlisted in 1791 aged 27. He was in a detachment of the 29th which was serving as marines aboard HMS Brunswick during the battle of the Glorious First of June 1794 against the French. He later served with the 29th in the Peninsula War and was present at the Regiment’s major battles there, Rolica, Vimiera, Talavera and Albuhera. He was discharged aged 51 in 1815 as unfit for further service “having been wounded in the right thigh”, presumably at Albuhera, where the 29th suffered heavy casualties. This is a rare group because only eight men from the 29th received the naval medal as it was not authorised until 53 years after the battle and then issued a year later only to those who had claimed it.
Of the three Jubilee medals struck during HM The Queen’s reign, the Silver medal was issued on the restricted scale of 10 per regular battalion, but the Golden and Diamond medals were awarded to all with over five years service. Two former members of WFR received all three medals. They are shown here carrying Cpl (later C/Sgt) Paul Brunt aloft after he had won the Queen’s Medal at Bisley in 1989. On the front left is Major (later Lt Col) David Elsam and front right is WO2 (later Capt) John Tyson.
Silver Jubilee Medal recipients Left to Right: Major (later Lt Col) David Elsam and WO2 (later Capt) John Tyson carrying Cpl (later C/Sgt) Paul Brunt aloft at Bisely
THE MERCIAN EAGLE