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Beryl Newton

Mother

Beryl Newton, nee Barford, was an accomplished artist and musician. Born in 1898 to a prosperous Luton family, her father was Ernest Barford of Barford Brothers, a substantial firm of hat makers, dyers and bleachers.

She had a traditional Edwardian childhood and was educated at home and then at Queen’s College, London. She studied painting with Savage Cooper, and the piano at Trinity College of Music.

She married Henry Newton in 1917 when he was on leave from Flanders and they had three children.

Lt. Col. Henry Newton CBE DSO

Father

Henry Newton was a distinguished engineer who founded the Second Army Field Workshops based at Hazebrouck in Northern France during the First World War. He had deployed to France in 1915 as a company commander in the Derbyshire and Nottinghamshire regiment, “The Sherwood Foresters”, and after a year in the trenches where his ingenuity in developing a number of weapons while on rest breaks behind the lines led to his appointment to form the Field Workshops. There he invented a number of grenades, trench mortars and various fuses, the workshops were within rifle range of the front line and a significant problem was shielding the glow from the furnaces at night to avoid being shelled. His work was of such importance that he was visited by General Haig, Asquith and Lloyd George during his time in France. He finished the war as Deputy Director of Trench Warfare working for Winston Churchill where he developed an armoured personnel carrier due for deployment in early 1919.

Haig kept a daily diary and on Sunday 16th January 1916 he wrote of his visit to see the then Captain Newton:

Glass steady – day dull & fine drizzle in afternoon.

Attended the Church of Scotland at 9:30am. A young Canadian conducted the service. He was quite eloquent and most earnest.
Lunched early and then motored to Hazebrouck & went round the R.E. workshop there. It is in fact a large factory employing over 600 hands & many women. Capt. Newton is in charge – an engineer who has joined for the war. He has invented many useful things for Trench Warfare. Went particularly to see his fuse for bombs. It’s so simple and certain in its action that it may have an important effect in operations. Newton has also a plan for making large quantities of ammunition without skilled labour which is now so short in England. The middle part of the shell is cast in the usual way but a band of tin is fitted in the top & bottom made in the same way as a cocoa tin canister. These bands fit the bore of the trench mortar and obviate the necessity for exact turning of the side of the shell in a lathe. By this means we shall be able to turn out ammun. by the ton !
{NOTE: Haig has made a small sketch of the shell in his diary alongside this entry}
The Duke of Northumberland who is visiting his Territorial units came to dinner. He is a quaint looking man with side whiskers & clean shaved about the mouth and chin. He wears spectacles. Somewhat shy and talks little. I gather that he thinks much of the money now spent on munitions is sticking to the hands of someone. Or rather that Lloyd George’s friends are drawing large salaries and doing very little in the way of turning out ammunition.

His experience of war had a profound affect on him and he wrote later in life of the bravery of “his boys” and the importance of the simple infantry man.

Patricia Machin

Sister

Patricia Machin was born in 1921. After war-time service as a Captain in the ATS she studied painting at Goldsmith’s finding inspiration from the Old Masters. Her tutor was Leonard Applebee, whose subject was Still-Life, and this became her main focus.

While living in a small flat in Earls Court she met the sculptor Arnold Machin, and they married in 1949. Patricia continued to paint throughout her life, inspired by the Staffordshire countryside where the family had made their home.

Her work developed into two distinct styles, very defined studies with mainly rural backgrounds, and highly imaginative ‘enchanted gardens’. She also painted some Landscapes and occasionally portraiture.

Her main body of work consisted of oil on canvas paintings, but she also found commercial success with a range of illustrated books and reproductions of her work on trays and tea-caddies.

Pamela Adams

Sister

Pamela Adams was born in 1918 and was educated at “Sandycoates”, Parkstone, Dorset. She married in 1942, but tragically her husband died soon after the war. She spent most of her working life abroad in a number of postings for the British Council, working in Vienna, Budapest, Buckarest and Belgrade during the Cold War period, and also Afganistan and Thailand.

She retired to Devon and her garden.

Ancel Newton graduated from Trinity College of Music, London, in the mid 1950's, studying composition under Douglas Mews, and after graduation, with Lennox Berkeley. A few years ago on re-reading some of the First World War poets he was compelled to return to composition, resulting in these collections of songs.

He is currently writing new work.