VALUABLE RELICS BURNED.

New Zealand Herald, Volume LXV, Issue 19957, 28 May 1928, Page 6

VALUABLE RELICS BURNED.

LINKS WITH GREAT CRICKET. MEMENTOES OF THE WAR. . Many articles which had great sentimental value were lost in the fire which, on April 10, destroyed a furniture store at Carlton, Melbourne. These included oil paintings which were to have been hung in the Wax Memorial Hall now under construction at Melbourne Grammar School some of Mr. Warwick Armstrong's cricket trophies, and many valuable antiques, all of which are irreplaceable. The goods destroyed were stored in the , building by private persons. The pictures owned .by the Melbourne Grammar School were oil paintings of four former headmasters,, including the first headmaster, Dr. J. E, Bromby. Three of the portraits were painted by Mr. Edward a'Beckett, who has the distinction of having been the first boy whose name was entered on the roll when the school was opened on April 7, 1858. The fourth portrait was painted by another old boy of the school, Mr. Norman Carter, of Sydney. Copies of the portraits exist, but they can never hold the same place in the traditions of the school as the originals. Links with great cricket days of the past were severed by the destruction in the fire of some of the most valuable trophies of Mr. Warwick Armstrong. They included mounted cricket balls, bats signed with names great in cricket history, and other trophies presented to Mr. Armstrong in appreciation of some of his remarkable performances. It is understood that the property of Mr. Armstrong, who is now living in Sydney, was insured. Relics of the Great War, which he had intended to present to the Commonwealth War Museum, were lost in the fire by Dr. B. M. Sutherland, of Collins Street. In 1915 Dr. Sutherland was in charge of No. 3 auxiliary to the first Australian general hospital in Egypt, and after the war he kept the flags which were flown over the hospital. When he left his former residence in Moonee Ponds recently, he placed the flags, together with the whole of his household goods, into the building which has been destroyed. Everything was destroyed. Dr. Sutherland also lost some rare specimens of Saracen armour, which he obtained in Cairo in 1914.