Tattoo

The Pickernell family have been managing the Garrison Theatre for three generations - since it opened in 1909. Bert Pickernell was the first Manager, followed by his son Ken and then his grandson, Tony, who manages the Theatre today. The Pickernells were involved in helping to organise the Tidworth Tattoos.

Ken Pickernell remembers ...

In its hey-day, the reputation of the Tidworth Tattoo was as great as that of those held in Edinburgh and until recently at Earls Court in London.

Tedworth House

The first Tidworth Tattoo took place in June 1920, taking the form of a pageant enacted on the grass behind Tedworth House. It quickly became a very popular annual event, running every evening for two weeks, preceeded by community singing, sponsored by the London News Chronicle which supplied the songsheets.

Special trains from London, Birmingham and Wales arrived at the station in Tidworth, where the present Naafi/Spar is located. Had you ever wondered how Station Road got its name or why the red brick houses at the top of Station Road were called "Railway Cottages" ?

People swarmed off the special trains, across Station Road, across the green, crossing the main road through Tidworth by means of a bridge, which was specially constructed each year for the purpose, and on through Tedworth Park to the Tattoo Ground which is about a mile from the station.
The trains themselves were turned around on the turntable, then shunted back to Ludgershall to wait for the end of the show.

Boys with trays of chocolate used to hover in Station Road, ready to sell their wares to alighting passengers. Bert Pickernell would scrutinise each boy's takings at the end of each day and woe betide any of them if there were any discrepancy ! Nevertheless, this was a very popular job and boys would queue from first light in order to be chosen for the job of chocolate-seller. The big chocolate manufacturers would make several special deliveries to Tidworth during the period of the Tattoo. Naafi canteens were set up all around Tedworth Park selling tea, cakes and sandwiches - you could buy a “supper box” for a shilling (5p!).

A programme would cost you 1/- and a packet of picture postcards 1/6. You could hire a cushion to sit on for 6d - or a stool to stand on to see over the heads of the people in front of you.

Each evening's takings would be kept in twenty large safes at the Tattoo Ground. Unable to take the money to Lloyds Bank in Amesbury until the following morning and unwilling to rely on the armed guard placed outside the tent where the safes were located, Bert Pickernell would unroll his sleeping bag across the top of the safes and spend the night there himself, armed with a pickaxe handle to ensure the safety of the cash !

Bert Pickernell

The logistics involved in organising the Tattoo were tremendous. These were the days before widespread military radio communications and mobile phones, which meant that 60 miles of telephone cable and a special exchange with 40 lines needed to be set up. The scenery was built by a firm called Chivers from Devizes and the car parking was organised by the Royal Automobile Club.

The grandstands extended from the Home Farm gate to the Polo Club; one was permanent, others were built specially for the Tattoo each year. Altogether there was the capacity to seat approximately 30,000 people.
600 million candlepower lighting was provided by huge searchlights mounted on scaffolding each end of the grandstand, erected by Chivers and operated by (4) Fortress Coy RE from Gosport and (1) Medium Brigade from Portsmouth. Loudspeakers were supplied by a firm from Walthamstow.

The Garrison Theatre was transformed into an enormous fitting room used to store the costumes for the 2,000 people taking part in the Tattoo. The costumes themselves came from theatrical costumiers, Fox & Rayner, in London. The Wilts and Hants Laundry in Shipton was on stand-by every evening to dry all the uniforms and costumes if it rained.

The Advance Booking Office was located on the site where the new Tidworth Primary Health Care Centre is now being built.

Feeding the cast of 2,000 was no easy task. A Naafi canteen was set up at the far end of the polo ground, near the water treatment plant - a location which was not too popular with the soldiers on account of the smell !

The Tidworth Tattoo was a marvellous spectacle which involved large numbers of troops, elaborate backdrops and military music. The “stage” was framed on two sides by castle walls with a huge gate opposite the grandstand through which the massed bands entered and left the arena. The third side, looking over towards the polo field, was left open and this is where the mock battles were enacted. For example, one year it was the “Capture of Quebec” : huge wind machines made ripples in strips of tarpaulin stretched across the polo field to give the effect of water, while “Wolfe and his soldiers” scaled scaffolding made to look like the Heights of Abrabam, to take the French unawares and secure victory !

One of the early displays was by a 1914-18 motorbike dispatch rider who would take off and jump over a gap in a broken wartime bridge. There was tremendous competition between two British motorbike manufacturers, Norton and Triumph, to produce a front wheel for the bike which would not collapse when the bike landed.

Despite the appearance of the tank on the Western Front in 1916, cavalry in the 1920s was still mainly horse-mounted. Many of the early displays reflected this and tent-pegging competitions between the cavalry regiments were very popular.
1936 marked the departure of the last horsed cavalry regiment from Tidworth. The new cavalry regiment which arrived in 1937, 11th Hussars, was mechanised. They were the first to be equipped with Rolls Royce armoured cars which were kept in the green sheds behind Candahar Barracks.

1936 was also the year that the Tidworth Tattoo was first broadcast live by the BBC.

Another display in the 1930s involved a "drunken" driver weaving his way across the field pursued by the Forces of the Law. Members of the audience were unaware that the person taking the part of the drunken driver was in fact the then Duke of Gloucester, the only member of the Royal Family to take part in the Tattoo !

Another of the displays was performed by children from one of the military schools, dressed as toy soldiers lined up in rows. Each time the cannons roared some of them would fall to the ground, pretending to have been knocked over. By the end of the display, smoke filled the air and not one of the toyland soldiers was left standing.

Ken Pickernell remembers cycling down to the Tattoo Ground every day after school to watch. He remembers vividly that, as the show drew to a close, a giant cross would be illuminated up on the hill as the massed bands gathered in the arena playing “Abide with Me” and “The Day Thou gavest Lord is ended”, followed by a magnificent firework display.

The last one of the early Tattoos took place in 1938. They were restarted in May 1966 and ran until 1976, this time with Ken Pickernell on the Tattoo Panel. The shows continued to be a great success, with the added attraction of Jennings Fair from Devizes and the BBC outside broadcast van recording the music of the massed bands.

One of the bands performs outside Tedworth House

During the period 1966 - 76, advance tickets were obtained from Garrison Headquarters which at that time was located in the building at the top of Lowa Road. The building is now used by the DHE.

The permanent grandstand was not demolished until the late 1980s/early 1990s.

A Tattoo and Beating Retreat was held on 15 June 2000 to mark the Millennium. This event was one of the first times the public was able to see the British Army’s Apache Attack Helicopter.

The most recent was held on 18 July 2002 to mark the Queen's Golden Jubilee.