Tin Hats, Doodle Bugs & Food Rations

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World War II exhibition at Gunnersbury Park Museum

CIP, Acton History Society and the Big Lottery Fund have worked together on a new exhibition, which opened at Gunnersbury Park Museum this month, to commemorate the 60th anniversary of the end of the Second World War.

 

The exhibition, Tin Hats, Doodle Bugs and Food Rations – Memories of Acton in World War II, will run until the end of August and tells the story of life on the Home Front using photographs, personal memories and posters, together with original objects from the museum’s own collections.

 

Children and visitors will be taken through the build up to war, the use of gasmasks and shelters, life in the blackout, rationing, bomb damage and the aftermath of war. There are also sections on “make do and mend”, the role of women in the factories and evacuees.

 

The museum will also host collections of the tin hats and gasmasks used by firewatchers at S.G Brown’s factory at Gypsy Corner, shrapnel from Ealing and ration books and clothing coupons from local residents. Also on display will be a typical week’s food rations in 1940 (which barely fill a plate) and patterns for making dresses out of silk parachutes.

 

On show for the first time, from 26 July, will be the recently discovered wartime street map of Acton showing exactly where each bomb fell.

 

June 28 2005