OTS News needs help in verifying if what has been portrayed to our news desk as a true story.
This in connection with Sir Winston Churchill Homburg Hat.
John Nolan ‘The Antiques Man‘ has bought what could turn out to be the buy of the century and has asked OTS News to help verify the story.
Back in mid 1945 just after the end of WW11 Churchill visited Liverpool and visited what was Martins Bank in Water Street. At the time the visit to the bank was kept secret for whatever reason. He visited the board room and then the basement of the bank according to the lift boy at that time. Later it was let known the basement was in fact an integral part of the War Room and the invasion of Germany and the landings in France. Now believe is a museum.
The story is………..
that when Churchill was in the Board Room he hung his hat and coat on the coat stand and later went to the basement without it. When he was in the basement he was cold and asked for his coat. The lift boy retrieved the coat leaving the hat still on the coat rack.
It would then seem that Churchill was paraded around the streets of Liverpool in an open roofed car. The missing hat, may be this is the reason why he is waving not a Homburg Hat but a military cap in the photographs yet wearing a suit of the time.
Churchill is never seen without his hat, yet in Liverpool many photographs show him without any hat.
From the information OTS News has learned the hat stayed on the hat rack for many years, the bank people known it as, Churchill’s Hat. When Martins Bank became Barclays, the Bank Director asked what is that hat doing there in the Board Room. The Churchill story was then told to him and the hat stayed on the hat rack until the early 1990’s when Barclays Bank was reorganized and the hat was demoted to a cupboard and then cleared out with a load of old stationery. The hat was saved from the tip by an older member of the staff and then taken to his home. When that person concerned died the family inherited it, always referred to the hat as Churchill’s. One of the later generations has now sold the hat to The Antiques Man.
The Antiques man wonders if any of the readers of the site have any relations who worked at the bank that has heard or been told a similar story about a hat that hung for over 45 years in Barclays Bank. (Martins Bank.)
Nolan not unaccustomed to finding interesting items. From the deeds to the Liverpool sea front, (Royal Liver Buildings Canard, White Star Buildings, The Mersey Docks and Harbour Board). A Bag owned by James Maybrick, some people think he was Jack the Ripper. The only part (a carved door frame) of the Palace of Westminster, (House of Parliament) ever to be sold. Queen Victoria knickers. Part of the Eiffel Tower. The last known piece of writing, the signature of Princess Diane, hours just prior to her death, the list goes on.
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