In this guest blog from Abingdon historian Steve King, he tells the story of four of the town’s D-Day heroes – at least one of whom will be instantly familiar to regular visitors and readers of the blog! Abingdon’s D-Day Four Steve King 3 June 1944 (D -2) The greatest invasion force the world had ever seen has assembled along the south coast of England, from Cornwall to…
Armed Forces Day Garden Party Saturday 22 June 2024 12pm – 8.30pm Join us to mark Armed Forces Day and celebrate 10 years of Soldiers of Oxfordshire Museum! On Saturday 22 June we’ll be holding a Garden Party in the beautiful gardens of The Oxfordshire Museum, just outside our front door! Our museum galleries, including our recently updated permanent galleries and our trio of brand new temporary exhibitions, Oxfordshire to…
Our thanks to RAF Benson for providing this article and photographs. Women of the WAAF: Joan Woodruff (née Heraghty) Joan Heraghty was born on 4 November 1923 and originally came from Goldthorpe, a few miles away from Doncaster in South Yorkshire. At eighteen years of age she decided to join the Woman’s Auxiliary Air Force. After her days of learning to march and learning about the Royal Air Force (square…
Women of the Air Transport Auxiliary – Freydis Mary Sharland Thanks to RAF Benson for providing us with this article Between 1939 and 1945, more than 1,300 ATA pilots delivered warplanes between factories, facilities and bases across Britain, and, later, into mainland Europe and the Mediterranean. In January 1940, the ATA’s first eight female pilots were recruited, and, based at what had been the De Havilland airfield at Hatfield in…
Veterans’ Coffee & Chat We’re starting a new, regular veterans’ coffee morning at the museum. Starting on Thursday 28 September the event will become a bi-monthly fixture, with future dates falling on the final Thursday of every other month. Open to all veterans, they’ll offer an opportunity to meet up and catch up with fellow veterans as well as a chance to browse the museum galleries free of charge. With…
The Lowestoft Journal published an article on 29th March 2022 covering the story of a unique photographic collection with historical connections to a tragic drowning of a number of Sea Scouts that had “come home” to a local Air Scout troop that had won bidding when the photos went to auction. The tragic events of June 1, 1914 saw three Sea Scouts, their two Scout Masters and a naval instructor drown when…
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…
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…
How You Can Help Build a Second World War Air-Raid Shelter At SOFO we tell stories of everyone affected by war in the county of Oxfordshire; from the soldier on the front line to ordinary families on the home front. Our small but dedicated team of staff and volunteers work hard to tell these stories of conflict and county in many different ways, including museum displays and learning sessions. Our latest…
