What amazing skill!  A jeweller at Fattorini’s in Birmingham crafted this silver badge before World War Two.  The castle picture, moulded in less than one millimetre thick metal, is based on the oil painting of Pontefract Castle in Pontefract museum.

The painting and the badge show the castle as it would have looked before the Civil War.  The jeweller successfully reduced a two-metre painting into a three-centimetre badge.  King Charles the First commissioned the painting in the museum some 20 years before his execution and the demolition of the castle. (The King’s collection was given away to tradesmen whom he had not been paid.  It’s strange to think that if it were not for this political revolution, our painting would still be in a London palace instead of Pontefract Museum!)

Pomfretians paid for the building of an infirmary in 1882.  By 1980 the hospital had become the second largest employer in the town after the Prince of Wales pit.  Today, as the coalmine is no longer working, the hospital has become the largest local employer.  (The National Health Service is the largest employer in Europe.) 

For many years the hospital had a teaching function. You can only imagine how proud those nurses who graduated at Pontefract as midwives would have been to wear such a superb piece of silverware.