My 2nd Carboot buy this morning is this plated c1917 Sugar Scuttle, possibly Trench Art !!. I’ll let the pics do the talking and look forward to any opinions or information . Thank you 
.
The broad arrow inscribed on it, of which the pheon is a variant, is a stylised representation of a metal arrowhead, comprising a tang and two barbs meeting at a point. It is a symbol used traditionally in heraldry and by the British government to mark government property.
But this isn’t. It is in fact a German 37 mm Cartridge inspected in Spandau and probably part of a 1917 batch.
The badge and button is Royal Horse Artillery and the CF may very well stand for Canadian forces. 1917 is self explanatory.
The Royal Canadian Horse Artillery was placed on active service on 6 August 1914 for instructional and camp administration duties. On 26 August 1914 it mobilized as the ‘Royal Canadian Horse Artillery C Brigade, CEF’,which embarked for England on 30 September 1914. The regiment disembarked in France on 20 July 1915, where it provided mobile field artillery support as part of the ‘Canadian Cavalry Brigade, CEF’ in France and Flanders until the end of the war. The brigade was disbanded on 23 October 1920.
Canadians can be proud of the work done by C Battery recruited in Montreal in 1914 and there after for service in Flanders. Less luminatory is the work done when it was first formed to put down the Riel Rebellion in Manitoba and its later work on behalf of Mr Cecil Rhodes in the Transvaal. The first effort was designed to kill Metis who were being purged from the prairies by the MacDonald government in Ottawa and didn’t like it and the second effort in the Transvaal was the defeat the Dutch who had lived there for two centuries and were seem by Rhodes as in the way of his imperial expansion – a racist apartheid expansion which poisoned Africa and continues to do so to this day. Brave man doing a difficult task for purposes we now universally condemn. Mind you if one had to justify the Great War it would come out not so great either — rather a nasty squabble between Queen Victoria’s royal European and Russian descendants.
CRWW
1 Like
Wowww 
, I honestly Hated history as a subject at school 
, but now when I can have a piece of history brought back to life I must have been a fool for not listening. Thank you very much for that lesson, I honestly appreciate learning something New every day. Alan
Kind of you to say so.
My grandfather was a gunner in that war. As a horse artillery or mobile gunner you are spared the trenches but afflicted with mud and often severely damaged horses which you still have to make tow the heavy artillery pieces. He emerged from that war completely deaf and with his left arm smashed by a recoil he failed to get out of the way of quick enough.
In between the terror of positioning the piece and actually firing was days sometimes weeks of simple boredom. Nothing to do except sit in a dugout or behind some form of shelter and wait for the next set of orders.
And the thing of it was they were often fighting over the same ground over and over again so it is perfectly possible having advanced they took German trenches and sat there for days.
Picking up a German shell casing and playing with it to make this item would have been perfectly possible especially toward the end when the Germans retreated behind the Hindenburg line surrendering about 200 miles of lateral territory for a counter attack which when it came drove the Allies nearly to the beaches and resulted in the Armistice which led to the Versailles Treaty which gave rise to Hitler with led to another war and a further 100 million killed. In that war losses were even worse.
If you get a chance go over to France and walk the battle fields. We don’t know exactly where this item came from but it was probably near Peronne as that was where the Battery was stationed. You mustn’t trespass but you can get a sense of it by being there. .
If nothing else it will show you how mundane and boring war was then and still is. Sitting in muddy fields in all weather, bad food, cold damp sleeping quarters, feet rotting inside boots, long discarded bodies smelling up the place and nothing to smoke or drink unless the canteens come by.
Today all that is gone and all you see are white patches where the chalk is thrown up by blast, old shell casings and sometimes bits of bone.
Of course you can explore battle fields in your own country. I have walked battlefields fought in almost every century in your country since before the Romans arrived. You will find local experts who can tell you where stuff happened.
Before Covid I walked Bosworth, the last battle of the War oi the Roses which put that Welshman on your throne and gave you the Tudors. Except for Elizabeth I they were all a disaster which ended up getting you the Stuarts from Scotland and another series of bad Kings. One so bad you cut his head off to make him shut up about how divine he was. When you got fed up with them you stuck the Germans on the throne simply because they were’t papists, and you still haven’t got rid of them.
But that’s all history. Go find some silver. All armies are fueled by it and all Kings lust after it.
:
1 Like
I too walk amongst history being a metal detecting enthusiast, the thrill of the finds and the research of the items history becomes like an addiction. we’ve found iron age, bronze age, Saxon, norman, Tudor etc etc artifacts , my favourites are the coins depicting the kings and the emperors the queens and the Caesars. A time machine is what we need, oh how I wish we could walk amongst our ancestors side by side. Just a miniscule fraction of some of the silver coins I’ve found
Your silver halfgroat from the Tower Mint, London of Queen Elizabeth I tells a story:
As you will know a halfgroat is twopence indicated by the two pellets behind crowned bust of Queen Elizabeth , wearing ruff and embroidered dress facing left; behind with the circuited lettering E D G ROSA SINA SPINA meaning “Elizabeth by the Grace of God, a rose without a thorn”. Dubious claim but anyway.
On the back at centre within a beaded circle and over a long cross fourchee, a plain square topped shield quartered with the arms of France and England and the lettering CIVITAS LONDON indicating the tower mint for origin.
The story is this is a hand-hammered coin made decades after milled edges to prevent clipping were invented by a Frenchman who got his head cut off for being French.
Elizabeth was not partial possibly because her mum, Ann was cropped by another Frenchman brought in with special Damascus sword for the job by her husband and Elizabeth’s dad.
The allegation was the Frenchman was stealing off the mint while in charge of it. The reality was clipping coins was very profitable and Walsingham and his chums were in on it and the clever Frenchman’s milled edge invention was cutting into his profits.
So this is hand-hammered and slightly clipped. And thornless happiness reigned.
Lot of silver got buried or lost during your civil war. So the origin of the find is as interesting as the coin itself.
CRWW
1 Like