Wish you were here? One Darlington man's collection of crested china

“I got my first two when I was 18 and I shall be 88 in a month’s time,” says the proud owner. “The lady who lived next door to my mother was very elderly and I would be sent round to do jobs. She had a case with a few pieces in and I admired them. Eventually she unexpectedly gave them to me.”

A Russian shrapnel shell souvenir from Darlington. All pictures by Sarah Caldecott

There’s a Russian shell with the Darlington coat of arms on it. There’s an early tank with the arms of Aysgarth on it. There’s a machine gun with Stanhope’s crest on it, a trench lamp from Newcastle, a motorcycle despatch rider from Sunderland and from Yarm there’s a First World War ambulance (below).

A stamp on the bottom of the ambulance shows that it was bought from William Metcalfe’s newsagents in Yarm High Street, just as the crested china souvenirs that featured in last week’s Memories were.

Crested china – or, to give it its posh name, heraldic porcelain – was all the rage in Edwardian times, more than a century ago. It is estimated that 90 per cent of households had china souvenirs on display on their mantlepieces or whatnots that they had brought back from their holidays or day trips.

There were ten companies, led by William Henry Goss, which specialised in making the items. They were largely in Stoke, the home of pottery, but there were another 100 or so smaller companies around the country also producing china souvenirs.

Goss produced more than 2,500 designs. Many were cups and saucers, or seaside items, buildings, animals or birds, but a surprisingly large number were militaristic designs that to 21st Century eyes look nothing like tourist souvenirs.

For example, there’s a china model of Tommy, a soldier, “in a dug-out somewhere in France”.

Tommy sits looking quite happily out of his dug-out (above), which has Shrapnel Villa written above it. On top of it is the coat of arms of Harrogate, complete with the Latin motto 'arx celebris fontibus'. This translates as 'a citadel famous for its springs', a reference to Harrogate’s origins as a spa town, although it is hard to think of anything less appropriate as a souvenir of a visit to a spa than a Tommy in a trench.

Similarly, from the Sussex seaside resort of Littlehampton there is a “model of the German bomb dropped on Bury St Edmunds from a Zeppelin on April 30, 1915”.

Or from Whitley Bay is a detailed china model of HMS DonnerBlitzen (above) which is said to be the “British tank as first used by British troops at the battle of the Ancre, September 1916”. This is correct, as the Battle of Flers-Courcelette on the Somme on September 15, 1916, is regarded as the first tank engagement, although whether any soldiers named their tanks after a couple of Santa’s reindeers is unknown.

A china tank from that well-known tourist hotspot of Bradford has the letters 'HMLS' on the top, as in the early days tanks were known as land ships to differentiate them from warships, airships or even spaceships.

The Bradford tank says on its side: “The British tank that gave them hell at the Marne 1918. Buy War Bonds.”

A trench lamp with a Newcastle crest on it

However, it doesn’t seem that any of the military items were sold to raise money for the war effort. They were just trinkets. Souvenirs.

A shell from Aldershot, a petrol can from Hastings, a soldier’s cap from Scarborough, an early aircraft from Newport on the Isle of Wight, a Super Zeppelin from Thorne in Doncaster, a searchlight from Nelson in Lancashire and a Mills hand grenade from Chesterfield which, fortunately, still has the metal pin in it.

A motorcycle despatch rider with the coat-of-arms of Sunderland on its front wheel. Pictures by Sarah Caldecott

And, of course, the shell from Darlington, the bottom of which says that it is a “model of a Russian shrapnel shell. The original was captured by the Huns and fired by them at the British”. What is more likely to bring back happy memories of a day in Darlo than such a souvenir?

"Tommy and his machine gun" with the crest of Stanhope on it

The collection is, though, absolutely fascinating and it reflects a very different, jingoistic period in the country’s history.

Crested china is now collectable. Put the term into eBay and you will find hundreds of items. Many will set you back only a couple of pounds although a rare tank in good condition would be upwards of £40.

But they do need dusting.

“When we lived in Darlington we had a cleaning lady. We came home one day and found she had left us a note saying ‘sorry, I dropped the bomb’,” says the wife of our collector.

A Zeppelin souvenir of a day out at Whitley Bay

• Do you have any crested china with local crests on it? Please email chris.lloyd@nne.co.uk

A souvenir from Aysgarth: an early tank with steering wheels at the rear. The tank has "HMLS" on the top, for His Majesty's Land Ship, and it looks like the potters have named this tank "Creme de Menthe"

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