One of our recent acquisitions is Villa Patricia, which was donated by a local couple in Woodstock. The doll’s house was commissioned by Dr Richard Blaiklock who served with the Hampshire Regiment as Regimental Medical Officer. He was sent overseas to Southern Italy in 1944 to assist local hospitals, and from there was sent into several prisoner of war camps to assess the prisoner’s medical needs. One of the camps…
An incredible story from the SOFO Museum Archives, Captain J Shaw’s account of how he became a Great War POW and his involvement in a number of escape attempts was originally published in three instalments in the Oxfordshire and Buckinghamshire Light Infantry’s Regimental Journal from September 1931 to January 1932. A few years later, in March 1939, the Journal would also publish a number of Shaw’s sketches of the tunnel which he…
Osmond Bartle Wordsworth – An Unknown Officer killed during the Great War has now been identified as collateral descendent of poet William Wordsworth In late October, volunteers at the Soldiers of Oxfordshire Museum in Woodstock received good news after years of research that took them on a journey from a garden in Northern France to across the United Kingdom, Australia, The United States of America, Ireland, Canada -and back to the battlefields…
Oral Histories – Air Raids, Anderson Shelters and Evacuation Since SOFO began we haven’t just collected objects and records. Volunteers have helped us record the memories of Oxfordshire people affected by historic conflicts in the form of recorded oral history interviews. You can hear some of these in use in the museum’s galleries when you visit (such as in our Liberation of Bergen-Belsen Concentration Camp, Airpower and D-Day displays), and…
Operation Pig Ark – Uncovering an Anderson Shelter in 2019 In 2019 members of the SOFO Museum Team collected an Anderson shelter roof from a farm in Deddington, Oxfordshire, where it had been repurposed into a pig ark. The metal was attached to large wooden blocks which were anchored to the ground, so our team had to carefully prise the metal away from the wood to free it. The roof was in several parts…
The Black Soldiers of the Oxfordshire and Buckinghamshire Regiments 1782-1831 (John D Ellis) Marking Black History Month 2020, we’re publishing a series posts by John D Ellis, researcher, historian and educator specialising in race and ethnicity in Britain and Ireland during the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. John’s research sheds light on little-known stories of black soldiers serving with the forerunners to the Oxfordshire and Buckinghamshire Light Infantry. This final part looks at the stories of a few…
The Black Soldiers of the Oxfordshire and Buckinghamshire Regiments 1782-1831 (John D Ellis) Marking Black History Month 2020, we’re publishing a series posts by John D Ellis, researcher, historian and educator specialising in race and ethnicity in Britain and Ireland during the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. John’s research sheds light on little-known stories of black soldiers serving with the forerunners to the Oxfordshire and Buckinghamshire Light Infantry. This second part goes into more detail about…
The Black Soldiers of the Oxfordshire and Buckinghamshire Regiments 1782-1831 (John D Ellis) Marking Black History Month 2020, we’re publishing a series posts by John D Ellis, researcher, historian and educator specialising in race and ethnicity in Britain and Ireland during the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. John’s research sheds light on little-known stories of black soldiers serving with the forerunners to the Oxfordshire and Buckinghamshire Light Infantry. In the eighteenth century the fashion for…
VJ DAY 15th August 1945 On the 15th August 1945, Japan finally surrendered to the allies bringing the bitter fighting in the last theatre of the second world war to an end. This day would be known afterwards as “VJ Day” or “Victory over Japan Day”. On this day two units of the county’s infantry regiment were present in theatre:- The 6th Battalion, Oxfordshire and Buckinghamshire Light Infantry and a…
The week starting on the 25th. May eighty years ago, was to be a memorable week for the Oxfordshire and Buckinghamshire Light Infantry. On the day that Lord Gort the commander of the British Expeditionary Force made the crucial decision to evacuate his troops through Dunkirk, three battalions of the Regiment were ordered to take up positions on the perimeter of the pocket that was being formed to protect the…
