In 1911 three of the Chambers uncles lived in Stafford Street; people used to jokingly call it Chambers Street. Actually, there is no Chambers Street in Swindon. Funny that really when you think how many other builders had streets named after them.
William Chambers lived and worked as builder and funeral director in the end house in Ashford Road, the one with the Calvary cross in the brickwork. You can still see it now, and the silhouette of the shop sign.
Sam, William’s youngest son took over the business when his father died. I suppose that’s pretty unusual when you think about it. You’d expect the eldest son to take over usually. After the war there were few elder sons left to carry on the family businesses.
Sidney was working in the business as a 15-year-old polisher. We all ended up working for one of the uncles. As kids there were always errands to run, materials to move, digging, sweeping. Uncle Sam could always find you a job to do although none of us liked helping in the funeral parlour.
My dad talked a lot about Sidney. They had grown up together, worked together, served together. They both came home. Dad unscathed, that is if you didn’t count the nightmares and the terrifying rages that so frightened us kids. Sidney only got as far as Devonport Hospital where he died on October 14, 1918.
Uncle Robert and Aunt Kate never got over his death. Some parents blamed the Hun, some blamed the government. Others blamed themselves.
It’s barely ten years since the war ended and sometimes it seems like yesterday. Some scars never heal. But those who died will always be remembered, well by my generation at least they will. It remains to be seen if those that follow will. Will anyone remember Sidney a hundred years from now?
The facts …
Sidney William T. Chambers was born in Swindon in 1895, the eldest of Robert and Kate Chambers’ four children.
He served first in the Cyclist Corps, later transferring to the Labour Corps. His military records do not survive.
Sidney died at Devonport Hospital on October 14, 1918. He was 23 years old. His funeral took place at Radnor Street Cemetery on October 19 and he is buried with his father and three other family members in plot C1052.
The inscription on the Commonwealth War Graves headstone reads:
Continuing a series of articles in remembrance of Swindon’s sons who served in two world wars.
Frederick Clarence Whatley was buried in Radnor Street Cemetery on October 16, 1918 but when I discovered his cause of death it raised many questions.
Frederick was born on February 8, 1899, the second son of William George Whatley, a cost clerk in the GWR Works, and his wife Emily, and grew up in the Broad Green area of Swindon. Frederick started work as a Machine Operator in the Locomotive Department of the Works on April 30, 1913, transferring to the Carriage and Wagon Works on February 21, 1914.
Frederick joined the Royal Navy in July 1917 and was assigned to HMS Campania, a seaplane training and balloon depot ship. In March 1918 he was transferred to the RAF and served at No 1 School of Navigation and Bomb Dropping (Stonehenge) as a 3rd Class Air Mechanic.
Frederick died in a diabetic coma on October 12, 1918 at the Fargo Military Hospital. He was 19 years old.
Although diabetes was identified in the 17th century, no effective form of treatment was available until the discovery of insulin in the 1920s. Two Canadian scientists, Frederick Banting and John Macleod, were awarded the Nobel Prize in 1923 and there were many others experimenting on a treatment around the same date. Diabetes is a condition that remains a bar to military service today.
Did Frederick know he had diabetes? Was his condition recognised in 1917 and if so how did he pass a medical? Unfortunately his military records do not survive. The CWGC records state that he died from a chill and family history researchers once believed he died in a flying accident, however, his death certificate tells the true story.
Frederick is remembered on a memorial plaque that was once displayed in the Carriage and Wagon Works and now hangs in Steam Museum.
He is buried in a family grave in Radnor Street Cemetery.
I never knew my two cousins Charles and Walter Hughes. I was born nearly twenty years after they both died in the Great War. In our family it felt as if the war never really ended. My gran lost four grandsons, boys she had helped to raise. Families were close in those days.
After the war, how did the families carry on? How did they pick up their lives with an empty place at the table and unslept beds in the back bedroom? A best suit hanging in the wardrobe; boots in the passage way. Family photographs where a pictured son, sometimes two, are forever missing. How did siblings feel, growing up, growing old, living years of which a brother was robbed?
Gran kept photographs of her boys on the mantelpiece for the rest of her life. I often wonder what happened to them after she died. No doubt one of my aunties took them. One thing I can guarantee, they will still be in one of the family homes, their names remembered once in awhile.
The facts ….
One Rodbourne family lost two sons in the First World War. Albert and Minnie Hughes lived all their married life in the streets alongside the railway factory, raising four sons and a daughter.
Their third son, Charles Normandale Hughes, was a driver with the Royal Field Artillery. He died on December 3, 1918 in Manchester. He was 19 years old. His war records are lost. His grave in plot D192 in Radnor Street Cemetery is marked by an official Commonwealth War Graves headstone.
Charles is buried with his parents and another family member E. Hughes, most probably a cousin. In 1995 the cremated remains of his sister Muriel May were interred in the grave. Muriel was just four years old when war broke out and claimed her elder brothers. She was 84 years old at the time of her death.
Albert and Minnie’s eldest son Walter George David Hughes joined the 97th Field Company Royal Engineers and was killed in action on June 26, 1916. He was 23 years old. He is buried in the Ville Sur Ancre Communal Cemetery.
Charles and Walter’s names appear on the Roll of Honour, now on display in the Civic Offices in Euclid Street. For nearly 100 years it hung in the old Town Hall and for many of those it remained hidden behind curtains after the building became used as a dance studio.
Charles received an official Commonwealth War Graves headstone and the Hughes family remembered their other lost son Walter on their own grave in Radnor Street Cemetery. Sadly, until recently the kerbstone memorial had lay discarded in nearby bushes. Radnor Street Cemetery war graves volunteers Jon, Dave and Brian have recently reunited the kerbstone with the family grave.
Join us today at 2 pm for a Service of Remembrance at the Cross of Sacrifice in Radnor Street Cemetery. During the service a plaque will be unveiled dedicated to Mark Sutton.
Join us tomorrow (Sunday November 12 at 2 pm) for a Service of Remembrance in Radnor Street Cemetery when we will commemorate all those who have died in war and as a result of their military service. We will also be unveiling a plaque dedicated to Mark Sutton.
Radnor Street Cemetery was a very special place to Mark. For many years he conducted guided walks around the war graves, remembering the Swindon men who served in the Great War.
He organised the Remembrance Day Service at the cemetery conducted first by his father Dennis and later by the clergy from St. Marks, and he maintained the cemetery chapel where he saw the installation of several memorial plaques.
Mark was an inspiration and a friend and will always be remembered here at Radnor Street Cemetery.
Mr King held a whole school assembly the day the news was published. William Hall had been awarded the DSM, the Distinguished Service Medal for Honours for Services in Action with Enemy Submarines.
William Hall hadn’t been a pupil at Jennings Street School. By the time the school opened he was working as an Engine Fitter ‘inside.’ It was this job that made him ideally suited for the role of Engine Room Artificer.
We all knew the Hall family. They lived at 77 Jennings Street. My auntie lived opposite them at number 4. Everyone knew everyone in Rodbourne in those days. We all shared in the glory of one of our own being so honoured.
Less than a year later we all mourned his death as well. He wasn’t killed in battle. To expect another act of heroism from one man would be too much. William Hall died of pneumonia and pleurisy – another form of drowning, only not at sea.
Perhaps Mr King held another assembly. I don’t know, I had left school by then and was waiting to start my own apprenticeship in the Works. I was too young to serve, much to the relief of my mother.
By 1918 everyone knew of someone who had died in the war. It was like that in Rodbourne. But not everyone knew someone who had won the DSM.
L to r Thomas Redvers Hall, William Jasper Hall and Frederick Charles Hall. Seated are their parents William Charles and Sarah (nee Kingdon) Hall.
The facts …
William Jasper Hall was born on November 6, 1888, the third child and second son of William Charles Hall and his wife Sarah. At the time of the 1891 census the family were living a 30 Jennings Street, Rodbourne on the very doorstep of the Great Western Railway Works.The family continued to live at various houses in Jennings Street.
William Jasper followed his father into the Works, entering the GWR Employment and a 7 year Fitters apprenticeship on his 14th birthday, November 6, 1902.
He enlisted in the Royal Navy on March 20, 1916 and completed his training period on the Victory II as an ERA (Engine Room Artificer) on April 28, 1916. His character and his ability were both described as Very Good.
William Jasper Hall seated second on right
His naval records reveal that he served on HMS Cormorant, a receiving ship at Gibraltar where he joined the Freemasons at the Masonic United Grand Lodge in 1916.
In September 1917 William was awarded the DSM (Distinguished Service Medal) for Honours for Services in Action with Enemy Submarines.
By 1918 he was back on Victory II, a shorebased depot for Royal Navy Divisions at Crystal Palace and Sydenham. From here he was admitted to the Royal Haslar Hospital in Gosportwhere he died on September 14, his cause of death pneumonia & pleurisy.
Family recollections are that William caught the Spanish Influenza with a poignant postscript to the story. His mother Sarah visited the hospital where she was able to care for her son during his final days. Sadly, Sarah contracted the ‘flu and died two weeks after her son.
William was buried in plot E7464 on September 19. His mother Sarah was buried in the same plot on September 28. William Charles Hall died in 1939 and joined his son and wife. Jessina, William Jasper’s elder sister, died in 1949 and was buried in the plot with her brother and her parents.
Family photographs are published courtesy of the Hall family.
It was our pride and pleasure to mark the installation of the 104th CWGC official headstone in Radnor Street Cemetery in September 2021.
The headstone marks the grave of William John Nurden, a former blacksmith’s striker in the Great Western Railway Works, Swindon. On December 11, 1914 he was killed whilst serving as a Lance Corporal in the Wiltshire Regiment. He was working on the Amesbury and Military Camp Light Railway (also known as the Bulford Camp Railway) at Newton Tony when he was killed crossing the railway line whilst on duty.
A team from the Commonwealth War Graves Commission installed an official headstone on the unmarked grave of William John Nurden, more than 105 years after his death.
Members of his extended family joined us at the Service of Remembrance in November 2021. We hope you will join us for the Remembrance Service this year during which a plaque dedicated to Mark Sutton will be unveiled. The service takes place around the Cross of Sacrifice at 2 pm Sunday November 12.
Radnor Street Cemetery volunteers with the CWGC team and the newly installed official headstone
Fred and Emily’s boy didn’t have a grave, so they made a memorial for him in Radnor Street Cemetery.
Fred and Emily married in middle age. He was 45 and she was 41. They had both been previously widowed. Emily had a daughter Elsie Louise, Fred doesn’t appear to have had any children by his first wife. And then along came little Fred. Was he the apple of their eye? Was he their pride and joy?
Fred was a Lance Corporal in the 2nd Battalion of the Wiltshire Regiment when he was killed in action on May 30, 1918. He was 19 years old. He has no known grave and is remembered on the Soissons Memorial.
Emily died in December 1926 and is buried with her first husband John Williams in plot number A2494. Fred died in February 1932 and is buried with his first wife in plot number B2331.
The memorial to their son stands on Emily’s grave.
The original British Expeditionary Force crossed the Aisne in August 1914 a few kilometres west of Soissons, and re-crossed it in September a few kilometres east. For the next three and a half years, this part of the front was held by French forces and the city remained within the range of German artillery.
At the end of April 1918, five divisions of Commonwealth forces (IX Corps) were posted to the French 6th Army in this sector to rest and refit following the German offensives on the Somme and Lys. Here, at the end of May, they found themselves facing the overwhelming German attack which, despite fierce opposition, pushed the Allies back across the Aisne to the Marne. Having suffered 15,000 fatal casualties, IX Corps was withdrawn from this front in early July, but was replaced by XXII Corps, who took part in the Allied counter attack that had driven back the Germans by early August and recovered the lost ground.
The Soissons Memorial commemorates almost 4,000 officers and men of the United Kingdom forces who died during the Battles of the Aisne and the Marne in 1918 and who have no known grave.
The memorial was designed by G.H. Holt and V.O. Rees, with sculpture by Eric Kennington. It was unveiled by Sir Alexander Hamilton-Gordon on 22 July 1928.
I was coming out of my apprenticeship in August 1914 and I knew I would soon be out of a job. They were laying men off at the Works and wouldn’t be taking on any newly qualified boilermakers.
Then England declared war on Germany and I enlisted with the Wiltshire Regiment the following week.
That was my reason for joining up. Other men had other reasons. Many enlisted because it was the right thing to do, God was on our side. Some joined up to be with friends and family. Others saw it as an opportunity to travel beyond the confines of Swindon and see a bit of the world and anyway, it would all be over by Christmas, that’s what everyone believed.
My mate Norman Lynes didn’t have an option. He had previously served with the Middlesex Regiment and was on the reserve list. Perhaps he had a different attitude to warfare, having already experienced it. I doubt whether he had a different attitude to being killed. We all wanted to come home. He wouldn’t have been any different.
Norman was reported missing following the attack on ‘Bully Wood’ during the Somme offensive in September 1916. Everyone knew what that meant; he had been killed in action, yet his death wasn’t confirmed until a year later – a year later! Then his mother placed a plaque on his father’s grave. It’s quite worn now; you can still read the words taken from his last letter home.
There’s no victory without sacrifice.
I didn’t want to make that sacrifice and I bet Norman didn’t want to either.
The facts …
Frederick Jesse Lynes married Ann Glover at St Mary de Lode, Gloucester on August 23, 1877. By the time of the 1881 census Frederick and Annie were living at 34 Catherine Street, Swindon with their daughter Maud aged 2 and five months old Frederick John.
Frederick was employed as a Steam Engine Maker and Turner at the GWR Works and by 1891 the family was living at 23 Carr Street, their home for more than twenty years. Their youngest child Norman was born there in 1892 and baptised at St Mark’s Church on February 22, 1892.
Frederick died in December 1904 and was buried on December 15 in grave E7187, a plot he shared with his mother Caroline who had died eleven years earlier. On his headstone is inscribed ‘for 25 years a member of St Mark’s Church choir.’
Frederick and Ann’s son Norman enlisted with the British Army at Hornsey on September 11, 1914. His attestation papers reveal that he had previously served in the 10th Middlesex and that his time had expired. He was 23 years and 11 months and a tall man, standing 6ft 2 and a half inches. With a chest measurement of 36 inches his physical development was described as good.
Norman served in Gibraltar and Egypt for seventeen months before being posted to France where he served for four months. On October 22 he was officially declared missing and on July 26, 1917 it was accepted that he was dead, his death assumed on or since September 1, 1916.
TF/200776 Private Lynes (1/7th Middlesex Regiment) name appears on the Thiepval Memorial Pier and Face 12D and 13B.
On September 20, 1921 Annie took receipt of her son’s medals – the 1914-15 Star and the British War & Victory Medals.
The 1/7th Battalion Middlesex Regiment served with the 167th Brigade, 56th (London) Division. They were on the Somme before the battle and helped dig assembly trenches near Hebuterne. On 1st July 1916 they were in reserve for the attack on Gommecourt. They trained with tanks in August 1916 near Abbeville and fought in the battles for Leuze Wood and Bouleaux Wood in September 1916. In one attack with the tanks on 15th September 1916 they lost over 300 men out of 500 who took part in the attack on ‘Bully Wood’. In October 1916 they fought at Spectrum Trench near Lesboeufs suffering nearly 200 casualties.
During this month of remembrance I will be telling the stories of those buried in the cemetery who died as a result of their military service.
Originally published on January 30, 2022.
The re-imagined story …
Who would have thought the country could be so excited at the prospect of going to war? Perhaps it was the heat – it was unseasonably hot, that second week in August 1914.
Thousands of soldiers, some said more than 17,000, arrived in Swindon with as many as five or six soldiers billeted in one house. Even the school buildings were temporarily used as barracks, delaying the return after the summer holiday, much to the excitement of the children. Common sense did eventually prevail and they were soon returned to the classroom.
The normally quiet streets of Swindon were transformed by military movements – soldiers on route marches and long columns of motor lorries and ambulances.
The excitement was palpable – after all, it would all be over by Christmas. What an opportunity to travel for the young men who only ever expected to see the inside of the Works. No one could have ever imagined how it would all play out, the crippling injuries, the dreadful death toll, the loss.
The shops were busy, even though tradesmen were encouraged to supply their regular customers with no more than their usual requirements. Panic buying was discouraged but those who had the wherewithal stocked up on essentials.
And even the photographic studios were busy, the appointment books full day after day. Young lads having their photographs taken with friends as they went on their way to enlist at the Recruitment Office. Sweethearts photographed to mark a hastily announced engagement and the promise of a wedding. A young mother and baby whose photograph would nestle in a father’s top pocket, gazed on in some filthy trench on the Western Front.
But William Pitt was different. He had already seen war at first hand. He had served in India and South Africa. A look in his eyes said he wanted no more of it.
Celia wore her best coat, the one with the big buttons, and her hat with the feathers and the bow. They both stared into the camera. After all, it would all be over by Christmas.
The facts …
When William James Pitt died in 1917 he had served his country well, but of course that didn’t mean he had a fine funeral and a headstone on his grave – not then. But a hundred years later his record of service was rediscovered and the Commonwealth War Graves Commission added him to their records and erected a headstone to commemorate his sacrifice.
William James Pitt was born in 1871 in Newport, Monmouthshire. He married Celia Sarah Davis on November 25, 1905 at the Register Office here in Swindon. William worked as a Boiler Maker and Labourer in the Loco Works and the 1911 census shows the couple living at 12 Hawkins Street, Rodbourne with their four young children. They went on to have another two children.
William enlisted in Swindon on October 20, 1914. He was a member of the National Reserve having previously served in the Royal Warwick Regiment. He had served in India for 5 years and 4 months; South Africa 1 year and 9 months and Bermuda 11 months.
He took ill while serving as a railway guard. His medical records include the following report:
‘Originated at Newton Tony April 1915 History of repeated colds during past winter, April 1915 16 days in Hosp: with so called ‘influenza’ after this kept losing flesh, cough did not leave him July 11th again reported sick, admitted to Hosp: with pleurisy, tuberculosis of lung developed caused by ordinary military service exposure whilst on duty. Has cough, pains in chest, rapid pulse, loss of weight & night sweats.‘
He was suffering from Tuberculosis (lung) & Pleuritic adhesions and was declared unfit for militaryservice. The cause of his illness was exposure & getting constantly wet and not caused by active service or climate, but by ordinary military service (exposure whilst on duty). He was discharged in September 1915 in consequence of being no longer physically fit, having served 346 days.
Celia and baby
The family history information on the Ancestry website tells how William’s daughter Violet remembered playing round her father’s feet in the kitchen, making dens under the blanket that covered his knees. She remembered that when he came back from the war he was ill and had to live in a special shed in the garden of 21 Hawkins Street.
William died on July 17, 1917 at 21 Hawkins Street. He was 45 years old. The cause of death was Pulmonary Tuberculosis. He was buried in Radnor Street Cemetery on July 21 in plot B1854, a public or pauper’s grave, which he shares with three other unrelated persons. Their names are inscribed at the bottom of the Commonwealth War Graves headstone.
Celia later worked as a cleaner at the Civic Offices in Euclid Street but how she managed in those early post war years with six children to raise alone has passed out of family memory. She later lived at 142 County Road, opposite the football ground. She died there in 1947 having survived yet another world war.
Radnor Street Cemetery 