Description
Given by Sir Henry and Lady Birkmyre
Bengal: 1880 – 1945
Small Collections Box 3
Hastings Air Base: Headquarters U.S.A.A.F. India-Burma Theater.
Printed December 1945.
- A pictorial record of Hastings Factory in World War II when it was turned from a jute factory into the U.S.A.A.F. H.Q. Hastings Mill had been owned by the Birkmyre’s who bought the land (previously owned. by Warren Hastings as a summer home) and in 1874 built the first jute mill in India. It became the largest mill under one roof. The mill was dismantled by the U.S.A.A.F. and after the war reassembled by them.
- Brief history of the Birkmyre connection with India written in a letter by Sir Henry on 3 December 1975.
- Copy of pictorial record of Hastings Factory during the 1914-18 War when the factory changed from jute manufacture to munitions.
- Copy of Scrapbook of newspaper cuttings about Lt. Colonel A.M. Shewell of the Bombay Staff Corps who died from wounds received in the retreat from Kandahar on the 2 September 1880. (Lt. Colonel Shewell was Lady Birkmyre’s grandfather).
- Copy of a MS letter written on 7 November 1897 by an officer in an unnamed regiment supporting the Dorset and Northamptonshire Regiments in an action on the N.W.F.P. The letter vividly describes the action and subsequent forays and retributive sorties.
