A significant part of the preparation for the Talking Threads exhibition was looking at the museum’s collection of banners, working out how and where to display them and researching their histories for interpretation. One of these banners that came under question was the Helston Toc H banner.
Toc H is a Christian organisation that grew out of the First World War. In 1915, army chaplains Phillip ‘Tubby’ Clayton and Neville Talbot opened Talbot house in Poperinge, Belgium. Talbot House functioned as an everyman’s club for men of every rank to rest, recuperate and recover. Poperinge was close to the front line and the men there faced the worst of the war in the trenches. The house offered a recreation room, a walled garden, a library, a kitchen, a noticeboard for soldiers to leave messages for friends, a chaplains room and a chapel where soldiers could take communion and prayers.
After the war, Tubby Clayton was keen to continue the fellowship fostered at Talbot House. With the help of a committee largely made up of men who had come through Talbot House in Belgium, he opened Toc H, renamed as the military abbreviation of its former site. The organisation focused on helping with the post-war demobilisation of soldiers. They provided accommodation and helped soldiers find employment. Eventually, the organisation expanded to other locations across the country and from 1922, became a global organisation with branches opening internationally.
As the organisation developed, it became more focused on acts of service in their community. Many groups organised fundraising events and provided voluntary workforce for local projects. Groups met regularly for guest night evenings where speakers would come in and then discussion on the topic would follow.
As more branches were set up, a regular journal started to share the work of groups nationally and internationally. In the 1930s, this journal encouraged branches to have banners to parade at festivals to publicise themselves. It was suggested that they should be made by Toc H members themselves but professionally made ones were also accepted. Many of these surviving banners were, for many years kept at the Toc H headquarters in Buckinghamshire until they were moved to the National Needlework Archive in Newbury, Berkshire.
The banner in our collection belongs to the Helston Branch of Toc H which started in 1938. They were formerly based in their own room on Meneage Street, opposite where Pauline Wills’ Fruit and Veg shop was near the end of Trengrouse Way.
Their banner was presented to them at their first re-dedication festival on the 5th November 1939. It had been made by Mrs W. Rowe whose husband was a member of Helston Toc H. The banner is embroidered with the Helston Town Crest and the Toc H lamp emblem. The embroidered slogan ‘In Lumine Tuo Viebimus Lumer’ translates as ‘In Thy Light We Shall See Light.’
In their active years, Helston Toc H were involved with many community service projects such as raising money for Helston Cottage Hospital, contributing to the Mayor’s Forces Christmas box fund, organising dances and giving out coal to elderly members of the town in winter. As a group, they also met for public services and talks, often enjoying pasties and tea at their meetings.
Today Toc H is still an active Christian movement that seeks to help others with acts of service.