“Let nothing perish” – the Charles Wade archive

Thanks to the patient work of volunteers, the fascinating archive of Charles Paget Wade has now been fully catalogued. Charles Paget Wade purchased Snowshill Manor near Broadway in 1919 to display his growing collection of objects, chosen to demonstrate what he regarded as the “essentials of design, colour and craftsmanship”. By the time of his death in 1956, Wade had acquired more than 20,000 objects, ranging from an ancient Egyptian alabaster pot to different types of clocks, ornate inlaid cabinets to wagons, Samurai armour to early velocipedes – as well as 2,250 pieces of 18th and 19th century clothing and much more besides. He could afford all of this because of the plantations and other businesses he had inherited in the West Indies, especially the island of St. Kitts.

“Constitutionally incapable of refusing action”

The Scene: A heaving unsettled sea, and away over to the western horizon an angry yellow sun is setting clearly below a forbidding bank of the blackest of wind charged clouds.

Extract from Whispers From The Fleet by Rear-Admiral Sir Christopher Cradock, KCVO, CB. 1908

The above words almost describe the prelude to the Battle of Coronel, a naval battle fought between British and German forces on 1^st November 1914 off the coast of Chile. This has a link to a previous blog – about HMS Gloucester and her involvement in the pursuit of the German warships Goeben and Breslau. Although these incidents may appear unrelated, they are not, for the first actually had a direct bearing on the latter.

Rear Admiral Sir Christopher ‘Kit’ Cradock