Enfilade

From the UK’s National Trust:

Taming the Tentacles
Shalford Mill, Surrey — 19, 23, 26, 30 September 2012

Shalford Mill, Surrey

Wearing masks and chanting Latin verse, the Ferguson Gang collected money to preserve buildings at risk of demolition. By the time the Gang’s activities wound down in 1946 they had preserved Shalford Mill, in Surrey, Newtown Old Town Hall on the Isle of Wight, Priory Cottages in Oxfordshire and donated some of the most beautiful stretches of the Cornish coastline to the National Trust. The exhibition is built on their essential strategy for life.

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The following account is excerpted from an August 2011 article from Surrey Life magazine:

Shalford Mill has been in the National Trust’s care since the early 1930s when it was bought for the organisation by an intriguing group of preservationists, called the Ferguson Gang. This group of mainly well-educated young women got together in the 1920s to raise money for philanthropic projects, which included saving Shalford Mill from demolition in 1932.

The members of the gang guarded their anonymity fiercely; giving each other various nicknames such as ‘Erb the Smasher’, ‘Bill Stickers’, ‘Red Biddy’ and ‘See Mee Run’. When it came to handing over the funds to the National Trust to purchase Shalford Mill, they did so secretly, wearing cloaks to deliver the money to the National Trust’s headquarters at Queen Anne’s Gate in London, and carrying bulging sacks packed with Victorian coins.

Having safeguarded its future, the gang went on to use Shalford Mill to hold their clandestine meetings. In fact, membership was limited to the number of people that could fit inside the mill. Here, they discussed future fund-raising tactics in private, while sitting around the drum of the millstones and enjoying picnics delivered from Fortnum and Mason.

Having eaten, the eccentric group would have a collection of all the coins they had managed to find. They would then wander round the mill in the small hours, searching for what they called ‘the four colours of the dawn’ (to this day, no one really knows what that meant), wrapped in veils and cloaks. . . .

The full article is available here»