Sylko D395 Bracken - The Context

The WW2 colours are numbered around the D400 mark, so we can therefore surmise that D395 dates from the late 1930s. The colour name of Bracken speaks volumes to me of the craze for hiking that dominated the leisure aspirations of the 1930s city dweller. Bus and trainloads of Manchester cotton workers and Sheffield steel workers fled the factory for the Peak District, finding fresh air and another life among the bracken and heather. Shell Guides and posters idealised the natural environment of England. It became so ingrained that writers began to incorporate it into their stories. 

"He looked again at the ad posters. He really hated them this time. That Vitamalt one, for instance! 'Hike all day on a slab of Vitamalt!' A youthful couple, boy and girl, in clean minded hiking kit, their hair picturesquely tousled by the wind, climbing a stile against a Sussex landscape"

George Orwell of course, "Keep the Aspidistra Flying"(1936). What with this quote and the entire "Coming up for Air" book, I think he was irritated by the rush to the country. 

"Love on the Dole", written by Walter Greenwood in 1933, was set on the mean streets of Salford. He demonstrated why workers needed to get away, what the bracken and heather meant to those that slaved in mills or faced the desolation of unemployment.  Characters Sal and Larry go hiking in Derbyshire,  where Sal hankers after the jerseys and shorts of the other girls. Which brings us to the cotton reel. Serious hikers needed serious clothing - as they do today. But instead of the Gore-Tex they had shorts and jackets that were made from appropriately coloured fabrics. I can see D395 being used to run up a weekend hiking outfit, or to sew a patch onto the arm of a jacket, ripped by a vicious bramble. 

Or perhaps those that lived near the forests went for D399, Silver Pine.


Read my 1940s tale "Temporary Accommodation" here - it's got a 5 star rating!

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