Neckerchiefs

[RobL]

I was fortunate enough to visit the Sandham Memorial Chapel this weekend, with the fantastic paintings by Stanley Spencer depicting the Salonika campaign and his experiences in a Bristol Hospital. I was particularly struck by the accuracy and attention to detail of the more mundane details such as paybooks, the small cotton 'collar' on the greyback shirts, Fray Bentos corned beef tins etc etc. One painting depicted laundry and there was a large pile of what looked like red with white polka dot neckerchiefs - were these an issue item, or a popular private purchase item? Can imagine they'd be very useful and comfortable, especially to protect the neck both from the sun and from the collar of the jacket, but it really struck me that all of them were red and such a large pile of them, i'm struggling to think of anything else they could have been

[Steven Broomfield]

Tablecloths from a French bistro?