Private Billeting - books and sources

[Guest]

Morning All,

 

Can an anyone recommend any books/articles etc on arrangements for billeting, especially in private homes?

 

I am especially interested in arrangements in Kent but all recommendations gratefully received.

 

Thanks.

 

Matt

[charlesmessenger]

I would suggest local newspapers as a good source.

 

Charles M

[Moonraker]

Just after Easter 1915, the 12th Rifle Brigade spent four days marching from Thursley in Surrey to Larkhill on Salisbury Plain, stopping overnight at Alton, Winchester and Middle Wallop; in the last place they were billeted in a cowshed that looked clean but had an unpleasant smell; it turned out that straw had been laid "on a lot of filth and cow dung". The colonel sent for the farmer and his two sons and ordered them to clean out the barn and lay fresh straw within an hour; if not done to his satisfaction legal proceedings would be taken. (Imperial War Museum:  01/36/1)

 

The Times of August 13, 1914, p4, has an article including about 200  words explaining billeting in Britain..

 

Hungerford had a taste of billeting in September 1913, when 2,000 soldiers were accommodated in the town and a few nearby farms. The allowance to owners of the properties were 1s 6d for an officer and 6d for a man. Another 8,000 men camped on the downs (Hungerford Common?) nearby. They were returning from manoeuvres on Salisbury Plain.

 

The Wiltshire Yeomanry's life in billets in Chippenham in late 1914 is described by Major C W Hughes in his unpublished memoirs (IWM: 82/25/1). The Yeomanry needed 150 men, of whom fifty were to replace fifty who had refused to serve overseas. Hughes was billeted in the Little George for one night, after which he moved into the Old George, where twenty-seven men slept in a skittle alley, each having a mattress, bolster and two blankets. He was not issued with an uniform for six weeks. Those Yeomanry members who refused to go overseas had a rough time from civilians: "The people of Chippenham expressed their feelings in very uncomplimentary terms, if you were not of a military age it is fairly safe to be contemptuous of those who dislike being killed."

During the winter of 1914–15 800,000 troops were billeted in Britain; householders received an allowance of 9d a night per soldier, 3s for an officer. If their rations were not handed over the householder, troops either ate with the householder (who was paid 2s 7½ per soldier) or in their own cookhouses.

 

Remembrance, a booklet written by Muriel Harris, nee Cable, and published in the late 1990s, gives her recollections of soldiers being billeted on her family in Andover during the Great War. In December 1914 the Cables and other Andover families were asked to take in soldiers who were encamped on Salisbury Plain and who were suffering from the wet conditions and an infestation of lice. Four men from the King's Own Royal Lancasters (Mrs Harris mistakenly refers to "Lancashires") were given the Cables' smallest (of three) bedrooms; the army stipulated that all furniture and bedding be removed, it providing clean blankets for the soldiers, who slept on the floor. During the winter, the soldiers continued their training, some practising trench-digging at night in nearby fields. They were succeeded in the billets by two Royal Engineers. Then, in March, a police sergeant knocked on the Cables' door and brusquely asked "Which do you want, Germans or soldiers?", to which Mr Cable replied "We've never refused to take anyone yet, have we?" Shortly there arrived two Boer War veterans, wearing their former uniforms, the red of a regiment of foot and the green dress and plumed hat of a rifleman. They were attached to the Leicester Regiment as instructors, but their knowledge of weapons was so out of date that they were discharged after two weeks. Later the Cables provided accommodation for men of the 16th King's Royal Rifle Corps, the 17th Durham Light Infantry (actually based in Rugeley, Staffordshire, at the time Mrs Harris says, though other DLI battalions were then training close to Andover) and the Royal Flying Corps.

 

Moonraker

 

[Moonraker]

As an afterthought I searched The Times on-line archive for "billeting" and had 169 hits, including debates/questions in Parliament, billeting in public houses, "cheaper billeting", "billeting and food prices", "extravagant billeting", "billeting of women workers" and "civilian billeting". Many of the 169 articles relate to billeting overseas and to small ads for accommodation.

 

One can access the archive via many local libraries.

 

Good reading!

 

Moonraker

[clive_hughes]

There is a chapter by Peter Simkins on billeting in Britain and France in Ian Beckett and Keith Simpson A Nation in Arms (various publishers/reprints from MUP 1985 to Pen & Sword in 2014)   

[Phil Wood]

In Newbury the councillors were concerned about forcing people to take in soldiers - so they decided to ask for volunteers who they would use first whenever there was demand.  They got so many volunteers that they felt they would never need compulsion.  It seems that the householders of Newbury were quite keen to cash in on the billetting bonanza.