Lydiard Park Field of Remembrance

Today I was among those who came to the Walled Garden at Lydiard Park to remember the men and women who had given their lives in the service of their country.

Revd Teresa Townsend read out the names of the local men from the small parish of Lydiard Tregoze who had gone to war and never came home.

The Great War 1914-1918 – the war to end all wars, they said.

Sergeant Ernest Arthur Townsend

Pte Reginald Skull D.C.M.

Pte Henry Frank Porter

Pte Percival Edge Smart

Pte Edward David Embling

Pte Charles Barnes

Pte Victor Reuben Newman

Pte Frank Curtis Webb

Pte Wilfred John Parrott

Pte Thomas Jesse Laurence

Pte John Thomas Titcombe

We remembered J. Embling and R. Fisher who lost their lives in the Second World War and Flt Sgt Mark Gibson who died when the Hercules XV179 was shot down in Iraq in 2005 and is buried in Hook Street Cemetery.

The day was sunny and the weather unseasonably warm. Birds flew overhead and all was quiet as we stood in silence.

The rebellious John Riley

The re-imagined story …

Some said John Riley was an intimidating character, but I never found him so. Yes, after a drink or two he could get a bit lairy, but I knew how to handle him. I suppose I had a bit of insight into what he had been through.

I don’t think anyone came back from the war the same person they had been before it. I’d argue with anyone who said they hadn’t known fear, hadn’t seen sights that made their stomach churn, done things that haunted them.

John Riley had known a fear and a horror the like of which few experienced and the only way to blot it out was to drink.

Aged just twenty, John had left the safety of a job as a storeman in the Works to join the army and have an adventure. Mostly all John saw were the bowels of the earth, like a rat in a sewer.

John liked to drink and he liked to gamble. His life was one big gamble. Would he be blown to pieces or buried alive? Would it happen today or tomorrow? The odds weren’t good.

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The facts …

John had little time for military protocol, he was outspoken and insubordinate and for this he was awarded Field Punishment No. 1. Sounds pretty innocuous, doesn’t it, but it was a torture metred out to rebels, those who wouldn’t abide by regulations. It was used to set an example to others who baulked at military discipline.

In September 1917 John went missing. He was absent while on active service for 34 hours and 55 minutes, and was charged with breaking out of camp at 9.30 pm on September 14 and breaking back in at 8.55 am on September 16. His punishment was to forfeit three days pay and 14 days Field Punishment No. 1.

So, what was Field Punishment No 1? The soldier found guilty was placed in fetters and handcuffs (sometimes spread eagled in a form called ‘crucifixion’) and tied to a fixed object such as a gun wheel or fence post, for one hour in the morning and one hour in the afternoon. Although this punishment was supposed to take place behind the front line in a field punishment camp, it was sometimes applied within range of enemy fire. When a unit was on the move, the unit itself would administer the punishment.

It wasn’t the first time John had been so punished. In September 1915 he had been ‘awarded’ as if it was an honour, 96 hours Field Punishment No 2 for “when on active service missing 8 am parade.” Field Punishment No 2 was a lesser punishment and involved the prisoner being placed in fetters and handcuffs, but not attached to a fixed object. Both sentences included hard labour.

In the summer of 1918, he was sentenced to 7 days Field Punishment No 1 for ‘misconduct’ on 24 August and on 31 August he received a further 7 days Field Punishment No 1 for leaving the lines without leave and missing a Medical Board as a consequence.

And a final insult, 12 days after the guns were silenced, John was demoted to Private by his Commanding Officer for “Neglect of duty.”

John’s audacious and fearless attitude, the qualities that made him a good tunneller, were the very characteristics that frustrated his Commanding Officers.

No one was more surprised than John when he survived the war and returned to the same job in the Works that he had left behind in 1914.

Did he enjoy the security, the safety, the daily routine? Surely, he didn’t miss the claustrophobia of the tunnels.

When John enlisted it was for three years or the duration of the war. It turned out to be a life sentence.

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View across Section C where Edwin John Riley is buried.

(Edwin) John Riley was born c1895 in Rodborough, Gloucestershire, the only one of John and Sarah Jane’s three children to survive to adulthood. By 1901 the family had moved to 11 Folkestone Road, where John’s father worked as a builders’ plumber.

As a sixteen-year-old John worked as a fishmonger but by 1913 he had secured a job as Storeman in the Works

John enlisted in the 1^st Battn Grenadier Guards at Caterham on December 19, 1914, aged 20 years and 34 days. His military records reveal that following eight months service at home John joined the Expeditionary Force in France from August 11, 1915 until January 10, 1918. By May 1916 John was attached to the 177^th Tunnelling Coy RE (Permanent) Authy. For more information about the work of the tunnelling companies and the 177^th see https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/177th_Tunnelling_Company.

He married Daisy Sweeper in 1919. John was discharged on demobilization on March 31, 1920 and their daughter Stella was born in 1922. A second daughter Jose was born in 1927.

In 1939 John was working as a Stores’ Issuer in the Railway Works and living in Harcourt Road, Gorse Hill with Daisy and their two daughters Stella and Jose.

Edwin John Riley died in October 1945 and was buried in plot C1678 on October 16.

cemetery view

Highgate Cemetery

What better way to spend a wet and windy Friday than to go on a cemetery walk.

I recently went with two new cemetery loving friends on a trip to Highgate Cemetery. For many taphophiles Highgate ranks high on the list of must visit cemeteries and I can confirm it did not disappoint.

Highgate is a cemetery of two halves, bisected by Swain’s Lane. We were met at the entrance to the older, West cemetery by our guide Martin who conducted us on a ‘highlights’ tour and a masterclass in all things cemetery focused.

We first stopped at the grave of James Selby, a coachman who won a £1,000 bet by driving his coach and horses from London to Brighton and back in under eight hours. We marvelled at the enormous Otway vault with its mosaic floor, once visible through a glass topped cover while at the grave of Baronness de Munck Martin told us the significance of the Pelican engraving on the headstone, symbolic of sacrifice and a mother’s love, and something I had never heard of before.

I never expected we would be able to enter the Terrace Catacombs but Martin unlocked the door and led us into this twilight world of burials. Badly vandalised in the 1970s there was still much to see and learn as we listened to the story of surgeon Robert Liston described as ‘the fastest knife in the West End.’

Amongst the ornate headstones and tombs and massive mausoleums (the Beer Mausoleum is bigger than my house!) the most moving grave for me was that of Highgate’s lost girls. Ten young girls and women, inmates of the Highgate penitentiary, a reformatory for “fallen women” are buried in an unmarked grave and remained forgotten and unknown until historians Rowan Lennon and Sam Perrin researched their stories in 2014. The first of the girls buried in the grave at the cemetery’s furthest boundary was 12 year old Emma Jones in 1862. The last was Agnes Ellis, 29 who died in 1909. The Lost Girls are now included on the official tours where their stories have a new “life”.

We three had our own personal mission – to get to the bottom of a burial that had once taken place in the Egyptian Avenue but whose coffin was reputedly no longer there.

Ellen Medex was the long suffering mistress of Henry, 5th Viscount Bolingbroke whose country seat was at Lydiard Park. Apparently his intention to marry the young Belgian born woman had been thwarted by her sister and it looks like Henry stopped pressing his suit thereafter. The couple sojourned on the continent for awhile before returning to London and a life lived as Mr and Mrs Morgan. They had four children, of whom only one, a daughter Ellen Rose, survived to adulthood before Henry took up with a servant from Lydiard, Bessie Howard. When Ellen died in 1885 Henry was overcome by grief, apparently! He chose the fashionable Highgate Cemetery as his preferred burial place for his “wife” and paid £136.10.0 to have Ellen interred as the Viscountess Bolingbroke. There is, however, no evidence that Henry ever married Ellen and even the entry in the burial registers describes her as “wife” (in inverted commas).

So why did I think Ellen had been removed? Well, someone told me she had. However, Nick at Highgate confirmed that she is still most definitely there and he includes her on his guided walks, which was lovely to learn.

The other mausoleums in the Egyptian Avenue have inscriptions by the door, but of course Henry didn’t do this for Ellen. He probably wasn’t brave enough to declare her status as Viscountess Bolingbroke in so public a place when there were many who knew she wasn’t.

One visit to Highgate is definitely not enough and my new found friends and I want to return. And now we have an ambitious plan to visit the remaining six cemeteries on the “Magnificent Seven” list. Look out Kensal Green – here we come!

The Egyptian Avenue where Ellen Medex is buried as Viscountess Bolingbroke

Cemetery map of the Egyptian Avenue – Ellen Medex (Viscountess Bolingbroke) is buried on the second right.

Greater love hath no man

The re-imagined story …

Mr Trineman had a fruiterer’s shop on Eastcott Hill next to the Duke of Wellington. He sold some lovely fruit and veg in there; you never got a bruised apple or a rotten potato. I suppose him being a former gardener made a difference. He used to work for Mr Morse up at the Croft.

I can remember little Kenny helping his father in the shop when he was barely tall enough to see over the counter. He liked to take the money and give the change. He was a bright little lad; his father’s pride and joy. It’s a blessing poor Mr Trineman didn’t live to see his son go to war.

Blessings were thin on the ground for the Trineman family. A baby son died before his first birthday and then three little daughters lost in the 1921 epidemic and now Kenny gone as well.

His headstone stands next to the children’s grave, although he doesn’t lie there, he was buried at sea, or that’s what the official record says. His ship was hit by enemy fire so his end probably wasn’t as dignified as ‘buried at sea.’

“In treasured memory of Kenneth John Trineman Sub Lieut RNVR – who paid the supreme sacrifice” the headstone reads. “Greater love hath no man than to give his life for his friends.”

But what about the parents …

The facts …

Frederick William Trineman married Emily Lilian Avenell in 1910. She was his second wife. He first married Mary Helena Kent in 1895. At the time of the 1901 census Frederick, Mary and their three children Beatrice, William and (Florence) Maud were living on Wroughton Road, close to where Frederick worked as a gardener for the Morse family at The Croft. Another son, Charles Frederick was born in 1903.

Four-year-old son William died in 1901 and Mary his mother died in 1909. Beatrice returned to her father’s family in Devon where she died in 1910 aged 14. Charles Frederick died in 1922 aged 19 so the only child to survive from Frederick’s first family was his daughter Florence Maud.

Mary Helena and Charles Frederick are buried in plot B3068. Little William does not appear to have been buried in Radnor Street Cemetery.

The children who died in 1921, the daughters of Frederick’s second marriage to Emily Lilian Avenell, are buried in plot E7503. Doris Alice was 18 months old when she died in July 1921. Hilda Mary was 6½ years old when she died in August 1921 and Emily Mary Kathleen was 8 years old when she died in October, 1921. The couple’s first child, Herbert William George who died aged four months old in September 1911, is mentioned on the headstone but is not buried in the grave. He is buried in an infant’s grave, plot A395, with three other children.

Frederick William Trineman died at his home, 26 Eastcott Hill, on October 11, 1936 and was buried with his first wife Mary and their son Charles.

By the outbreak of war in 1939 only three of Frederick’s ten children had survived – Florence Maud from his first marriage and Kenneth John and Joyce E. from his second.

Emily Lilian Trineman died on April 22, 1944 at her home 25 Kent Road. She is buried in plot E7503 with her three daughters and Iris Emily Mary Roberts who died in July 1933 aged 7 years old. Iris was the daughter of Florence Maud and her husband Clifford Roberts.

Kenneth John Trineman RNVR was serving as Acting Sub Lieutenant on HMS Malvernian when the ship was bombed and heavily damaged on July 1, 1941 in the Bay of Biscay on a voyage from Hull to Gibraltar. The ship was abandoned and later spotted drifting. It was finally sunk on July 19. Twenty-four naval personnel lost their lives. Kenneth date of death is given as July 2, 1941. He was 25 years old.