Dacorum at War

Exhibition Handbook

Dacorum Heritage Trust 1995

Booklet, 21 * 15 cm, 58 pages

There is a web page for Dacorum (which includes Hemel Hempstead, Berkhamsted, Tring and a number of villages)

CONTENTS

  1. Prehistoric, Iron Age and Roman

  2. Norman Conquest

  3. Berkhamsted Castle

  4. The Peasants' Revolt

  5. Civil Wars

  6. Hertfordshire Yeomanry

  7. John Dickinson's Volunteers

  8. VC awarded in the Boer War

  9. The Inns of Court Officer Training Corps

  10. VCs awarded in World War I 

  11. The Women's Land Army in World War I

  12. Hemel Hempstead Schools in the First World War

  13. John Dickinson & Co Ltd

  14. C T Brocks Ltd Munitions Memories

  15. Home Guard

  16. The ARP

  17. Evacuation

  18. Women's Land Army in World War II

  19. The Effect of War on Agriculture around Markyate

  20. Railways

  21. Bovingdon Airfield

  22. Beechwood Park Airstrip

  23. Sponsorships

  24. VC awarded in World War II

  25. German Prisoners of War

  26. Ashridge Hospital

NOTE - Virtually all the headings - and possibly most of the text are identical to the contents of the 1987 Dacorum at War Exhibition Handbook. - See also "The Home Front" which reprints the World War II parts of Sections 14-26 with some added pictures.

Books on Hertfordshire

The Home Front

Life in the Dacorum Area during the Second World War 1939-1945

Edited by Denis Miles

Published by Dacorum Heritage Trust 2005

Paperback booklet of 68 pages, no index

ISBN   0 9539414 2 6
                                 

In 2005 the Dacorum Heritage Trust held an exhibition "Digging for Victory in Dacorum" which was about the Home Front in the Second World War and funded by the Home Front Recall, The Big Lottery Fund. This booklet was produced to accompany this exhibition.

The introduction states that "the material has been drawn mainly from booklets that The Dacorum Heritage Trust Ltd (DHT)" and its predecessor organisation. It would have been clearer to say that the booklet is an edited version of the ext for the 1995 Dacorum at War Exhibition Handbook with some added pictures. As the 1995 Exhibition Handbook had covered all periods the irrelevant sections had been omitted and replaced by the text of some short reports that had been available for visitors at the 1995 Exhibition. Most of the material in the 1995 Handbook was identical to that in the 1987 Dacorum at War Exhibition Handbook which means that much of The Home Front is verbatim text from the 1987 Handbook (or perhaps earlier).

Sections which include additional information to the 1995 Handbook are:

  List of Illustrations    
  Introduction, Denis Miles    
1 Home Guard experiences of Ernest Maurer, Freda Maurer.   Extra 1995 Exhibition Booklet
2 The War Years 1939 to 1945, Bernard Cox   Extra 1995 Exhibition Booklet
10 Canals, Mary Nobbs   Extra 1995 Exhibition Booklet
11 Bovingdon Airfield - Station 112, Les Grimsdale and Ray Potter   Additional Information dated 1997
12 Beechwood Park Airstrip, Eric Edwards   Table of staff omitted in 2005 version
  Bibliography    

A strong warning is appropriate about the "Bibliography" - which with the list of illustrations and the introduction - are the only new text in the 1995 Exhibition Handbook. The purpose of a bibliography should be to direct the reader to places where he can find further information, but this bibliography appears to be only there to present a grossly misleading view of the number of "books" produced by DHT in the past. For example the section on Ashridge Hospital by Kay Sanecki has no indication as to when it was written - or whether it was a reprint or an original article. The bibliography has the entry:

Sanecki, Kay (1995) Ashridge Hospital. Dacorum Heritage Trust.

This suggests that the reader can find additional information in a book called Ashridge Hospital by Kay Sanecki - but searches in all the copyright libraries draws a blank. [Ok. You will find the book Ashridge, A Living History, by Kay Sanecki but that is not what the bibliography says.] Ashridge Hospital is also not listed as a publication on the DHT list. If you eventually tracked the reference down you will find that it refers to pages 55-56 in the 1995 Exhibition Handbook - or pages 50-51 in the 1987 Handbook. You will also discover - having wasted hours looking for the highly misleading reference - that all you have discovered is that the 2005 section is textually identical to the 1995 and 1987 pieces, although it does include a picture. Many of the other references turn out to be to page references to identical text in unidentified documents which may not have been supplied to the copyright libraries, and possibly not to HALS ... So you have been warned - don't waste your time trying to follow up the references in this bibliography.

 

Locating Books
At the time this page was last updated copies  of The Home Front were available from the publisher

Page updated November 2011