VE Day Special

To mark the 80th anniversary of VE Day, the team open the barn doors to four very special items, each with an extraordinary wartime story behind them.

Horologist Steve Fletcher is honoured to welcome 101-year-old Royal Navy veteran John Holloway, who brings with him a very special timepiece. As an engineer on board the aircraft carrier HMS Formidable, John was responsible for servicing the planes and installing the precisely calibrated cockpit clocks that US pilots relied upon to carry out their missions. Left in possession of one of these clocks at the end of the war, John gifted it to his beloved wife Connie, and it remained on her bedside table for the rest of her life. But now, with the intricate mechanism no longer working, Steve and his watchmaker son Fred have a delicate and very tricky job on their hands to get it ticking again.

Teddy bear ladies Julie and Amanda also find themselves up against it when faced with 86-year-old Haisi, a small plastic doll who accompanied her then two-year-old owner Ruth on an extraordinary journey from wartime Austria to the safety of the UK. As a Jewish orphan with no passport or papers, Ruth’s future in Nazi-occupied Vienna looked bleak, until she – and Haisi – were smuggled out of the country, courtesy of a remarkable feat of subterfuge at Dover customs. Plastics restorer Charlotte Abbott is called in to work on Haisi’s cracked and shattered celluloid limbs. However, even with three top experts on the case, it feels like it could be touch and go for Ruth’s precious, but very fragile, lifelong companion.

Also in this VE Day special, master hatter Jayesh Vaghela weaves his magic on an RAF cap with a remarkable story behind it. The cap was worn in combat by Johnny Smythe, a young man from Sierra Leone who volunteered for action and was selected to serve as a navigator with Bomber Command. One of only 60 Black African airmen to serve in the RAF, Johnny survived being shot down over Germany and imprisonment in Stalag Luft 1 before going on to a glittering career as a senior diplomat in his native Sierra Leone. John’s son Eddy would love to see the cap restored to a presentable state, with its battle scars preserved, as a testament to his father’s many achievements.

And finally, bookbinder Chris Shaw is left spellbound by the contents of a little autograph book, full of heartfelt and poignant messages written to a wartime nurse by her patients. Brought into the barn by Dorothy Orr from County Antrim, the book belonged to her mother Margaret, who tended to soldiers from all over the world as they were recovering from their wounds in military hospitals across Scotland.