VBCW LEOMINSTER - SPRING BIG GAME 2022 BACKGROUND

There seems to be a surprising lack of photographs of 1930s VBCW Leominster. This may be due to the locals desire to forget the traumatic events of 1938, when the town was surrounded and besieged by opposition factions - triumphant Anglicans from the north, rampaging Social Democratic Republicans from the west and hard line (very hard line) Communists from the east. The early battles on the outskirts had resulted only in a thinning of HM Government's defensive lines around the town:

The Leominster street plan, unchanged from the days of the VBCW. However, the
 modern day visitor will find the Tourist Information Centre strangely devoid of
 information about the infamous "Battle of Leominster 1938".
A map showing Leominster's place within the County
can be found HERE

Thus, the best we can do is a couple of photographs of the Leominster market square from the 1960s, when the VBCW was slowly fading into memory:

Corn Square in the 1960s - Bedford and Commer vans, stalls with plastic sheeting, local produce.
Many of these local shoppers will have had private memories of the fierce fighting of 1938.

Another day, another 1960s view. For those who do care to remember, the new
 housing development on one side of Corn Square is a special reminder of times gone by...

In 1938, Corn Square was dominated by the local BUF "Black House". Quite how it came to be demolished, whether by explosion or post VBCW redevelopment, is inevitably a story for a later blogpost. But it no longer dominates the skyline of the Square, nor strikes fear into the hearts of local shoppers, having been replaced by a somewhat (perhaps deliberately) anonymous block of flats.

That is not all. The "supersized" statue of the notorious BUF Captain Arrowsmith, which once stood proudly in the centre of Corn Square, has now given way to nothing but blank tarmac and a temporary fruit stall ........... a victim of commerce over ideology? Corporate amnesia over collective memory? Only time will tell....

[Note One] The Arrowsmith statue was one of a number erected around the County by the BUF during his "days of pomp" as the County's most significant Fascist commander, well before his notorious disappearance (see blogposts passim) In 1938, it bore the inscription "ARROWSMITH - HERO - Once and Future". What could such an inscription have meant?

All these questions (and more) can only be answered by attendance at the Hereford 1938 AVBCW Spring Big Game 2022, at Burley Gate Village Hall on Saturday 26th March 2022 (10am - 5pm)!!