Saint with a solo spot
QUESTION In a village close to where I live is a church dedicated to St Firmin. Who was he? St Firmin (or Fermin) is generally associated with either Spain or France. He’s said to have been the son of a roman senator in Pamplona, capital of navarre, northern Spain, in the 3rd century AD.
Converted to Christianity by St Honestus, a disciple of St Saturninus (also known as St Cernin), by tradition, he was baptised by Saturninus at the Pocico de San Cernin (Small Well of San Cernin).
According to local legend, he was ordained a priest in toulouse, South-West France, and returned to Pamplona as its first bishop. On a later voyage, having preached the gospel, Firmin was beheaded in Amiens, France, on September 25, AD 303.
this was during the last great roman purge of the Christian faith, known as the Diocletianic Persecution.
From 303, the Emperors Diocletian, maximian, Galerius and Constantius issued a series of edicts rescinding the legal rights of Christians and demanding they comply with traditional roman religious practices.
Several miracles are associated with the discovery and translation of Firmin’s relics in the time of Savin, Bishop of Amiens (traditionally about AD600). it’s said a sweet odour arose from his grave, and the smell caused ice and snow to melt, flowers to grow, the sick to be cured and trees to be inclined reverently toward the saint’s resting place.
the famous festival of the running of the Bulls in Pamplona is known as the Festival of St Firmin. But his link to it is erroneous; it should be related to the fate of his master, Saturninus. Condemned to death on account of his faith, Saturninus was tied to a bull by his feet and dragged to his death.
the church in thurlby, Lincolnshire, is dedicated to St Firmin — a unique dedication in England. there were dedications at monasteries in north Crawley in Bucks and thorney in Cambridgeshire, but these have since been lost.
St Firmin stands on the east bank of the Car Dyke, originally a roman catch water drain and canal linking Peterborough with Lincoln. Given the dedication to a roman bishop and the proximity to the dyke, it seems possible there was a romano-British church here dating as far back as AD 400.
the oldest part of today’s church is the tower, of which the two lowest stages are believed to date from AD925. the nave was rebuilt by the normans in around 1100 and has norman arcades on both sides, with improvements in subsequent centuries.
Fergus Gettins, Brancaster, Norfolk. QUESTION When was the description ‘Mentioned in Despatches’ first formalised into a specific accolade? tHE practice of field commanders sending reports of their activities to a higher authority is as old as warfare itself.
in Britain’s Forces, the despatches sent back to Parliament were published in the London Gazette, the official government newspaper — a practice dating back to the Gazette’s first publication in 1665.
As part of the despatch, it was normal for the commander to mention the names of those soldiers who had acted with particular valour or performed with merit, and this is the origin of the phrase.
Sir Charles napier was the first British commander to mention those below commissioned rank, on march 2, 1843, during the conquest of Sindh province in what is now Pakistan. A list of names was usually attached to the main despatch.
Publication in the London Gazette of the names of soldiers mentioned in despatches started during the Boer War, but until 1919 there was no emblem to signify that a soldier had been thus recognised.
the granting of an award for bravery or meritorious service was still subject to the writing of a specific citation for the event that earned the award.
in 1919 the War Office decided to grant a certificate to denote a mention in Despatches (miD, plus an emblem to be worn on the uniform. this was granted retrospectively to all soldiers who had served in World War i and had received an miD.
the emblem was a spray of bronze oak leaves, slightly shorter than the width of a medal ribbon, usually sewn onto the campaign medal to which the award related.
For World War i awards, this was the Victory medal. For World War ii it was the War medal 1939-1945 and for many other campaigns it was the General Service medal. in 1920 the emblem was changed to a single bronze oak leaf.
A mention in Despatches is one of only three awards that can be granted posthumously, the other two being the Victoria Cross and the George Cross.
Bob Cubitt, Northampton. QUESTION Does anyone know the history of the Auto Stacker, a car park stacking device opened on the site of the demolished Woolwich Empire in the Fifties? FurtHEr to earlier answers, in the Eighties at Jaguar Cars, Browns Lane, Coventry, a new building was added to increase throughput of fully-painted car bodies.
the process was to paint the body fully (doors, bonnets and boot lids) at Castle Bromwich, Birmingham. they were then carried by road vehicles equipped with track rails to hold the car bodies.
On arrival at Browns Lane, they were automatically unloaded into a stacking system capable of holding 400 bodies.
the unmanned stacker then placed each body into a recorded location in racking six storeys high. this was activated by a computer which read from the barcode identifier unique to each body.
When the body was needed for final assembly on the moving line, it was automatically retrieved by using the same barcode and passed to an overhead conveyor, which deposited it in the correct sequence at the start of the line.
their handling needed to be 100 per cent reliable otherwise it would cause chaos further down the production line.
A ‘buffer’ stock of bodies was designed to meet the demand for colour and equipment choices, particularly from the u.S., Jaguar’s most important market. it was too slow and costly to be constantly changing colours and cleaning down at Castle Bromwich
Barcoding was crucial in handling this bewildering variety of painted bodies.
if there were any demand for car parking stackers today, they could be controlled readily and reliably by using barcode labelling.
Malcolm Prestage, Leamington Spa, Warks.
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