Chailey village green

Here's another view of Chailey village green, looking up what is now the A275 towards North Chailey.

Chailey Green 1920s

Here's Chailey Green with the war memorial. You can read more about Chailey's war memorial and remembrance on the main site.

Chailey Green pre October 1920

I've been sent a couple of old photos of Chailey - and I have others which I'll also post in due course.

This first one shows Chailey Green before the war memorial was unveiled in October 1920. I'm assuming that this photograph and others that I'll post are out of copyright and that they're OK to post on a non-commercial, remembrance blog. If they're not, I'm sure somebody will let me know.

Ninety two years on

Horace Ham was in the line opposite Hawthorn Redoubt when it was blown up at 7.20am on 1st July 1916. He wasn't a Chailey man but he was there on the Somme on the day that the British Army suffered its heaviest casualties in a single day. Today, it's headline news when a soldier is killed in Afghanistan. On 1st July 1916, the British Army sustained nearly 60,000 casualties, almost a third of these killed and most of those killed in the first hour of the British attack. The failure of that attack and the reasons behind it have been written about ever since. But today, 92 years on, I'll leave the talking to Horace Ham.

Horace was 93 years old when I interviewed him at The Royal Star and Garter home in Richmond-upon-Thames in 1988. Before the war he was a footman, but on July 1st 1916 he was a private soldier, one of Kitchener's men waiting in a trench, ready to go over the top with the 16th (Public Schools) Battalion of the Middlesex Regiment.

"The 1st July 1916 was a proper mess up. You see we were told that all the barbed wire would be cut and all the Germans would be dead, all that sort of thing. Instead of that, the Germans were very clever. They'd built marvellous dug-outs which they built properly. They were like houses underground, beds and everything in there. The Germans said they were going to stay put and when our people started shelling, they went down their dug-outs. As soon as they stopped and we advanced, they came up, put their machine guns up and mowed our fellas down like ninepins.

"I was lucky mind. I saw Hawthorn Ridge go up and I got hit in the hip with a bit of shrapnel just as we started. I didn't actually get over the trench, I was lucky. All my pals got killed or wounded, gone. There was five of us sort of joined up together. There was myself, a fella named Walker, a fella named Richardson and two brothers named Mellish - they came from Wembley. We sort of palled up and all went around together in the army. Well on the 1st July, I got wounded, Richardson got wounded, young Mellish got through it and Jerry Walker and the eldest Mellish we never heard of, they got killed.

"I should have been in the first wave but I was lucky, I tell you. I was really lucky and I've had my fingers crossed ever since then. I wasn't the only one. Bags of them got wounded just as it started. I saw some of the fellas that came back when we were being seen to and you've never seen such wounds in your life. I've seen some terrible sights but who hasn't in war?"

PS/1491 Private Alfred George Mellish is buried in Hawthorn Ridge Cemetery Number 1 at Auchonvillers. Jerry Walker must be PS/1609 Private Alfred Walker who was killed on this date (the only Walker killed whilst serving with the 16th Middlesex) and who is commemorated on the Thiepval Memorial. The 16th Middlesex lost seven officers and 155 men killed on 1st July, others would die of their wounds over the days that followed.

At the going down of the sun, and in the morning, WE WILL REMEMBER THEM.

Ancestry.co.uk

I've added some links to Ancestry.co.uk on the site. To be honest, I'll get some revenue if people click through and subscribe but apart from that, I think that Ancestry provide an excellent service. Living 5000 miles away from the Public Record office, my research would have been greatly hampered had it not been for the ease of access to archives on line.

When I first started researching Chailey, there was barely any on-line resource available. Indeed, I'm pretty sure the term "on-line" had not even been coined. I still remember, a little later, making several trips from Essex to Kew to go through medal index cards - and that was just for the wounded soldiers at Hickwells and Beechlands. I hadn't even begun to contemplate the 370 odd parishioners who served their country.

Today, medal index cards, service records from WO363 and WO364, not to mention census returns for the years 1841 to 1901 and birth / marriage / death information are all available on Ancestry for around seventy pounds a year. Naval service records, officer records and war diaries, to say nothing of Royal Naval Division service records can all be accessed via the National Archives' site. For somebody like me who has researched well over five hundred people and had access to all the above archives and more, a subscription to Ancestry is not just a luxury, it's an essential.

Anyway, that's enough plugging for Ancestry. If you go to the soldier pages now, you'll see that those men for whom service records exist, have that fact noted against their names (well, names A-L currently but the others will follow). Click on that name and once you're in their biography on my site, you'll be able to access their service record directly - terms and conditions applying of course.

Folow the Chailey's Men A-D link here to see what I mean.

John Basil Lee Jellicoe

Ian Seccombe of Chailey has kindly sent me photographs of the grave of John Basil Lee Jellicoe and his wife, Bethia Theodora, in St Peter's churchyard, Chailey. Basil, as he was known, served briefly in the Royal Naval Volunteer Reserve (RNVR) towards the end of the First World War, but it is his campaigning work in the slums of north London that he is - or certainly was - chiefly remembered for.
 

Like his father, he was a church of England clergyman, but he died at the young age of 36. His wife outlived him by a quarter of a century.

Hugo Frederick Grantham

Hugo Frederick Grantham, pictured above, was the son of Frederick William Grantham. Born in April 1895, he was killed in action at Gallipoli on 28th June 1915 whilst serving with the 1st Essex Regiment. The battalion had arrived on the peninsular on 24th April that year.

The following extracts are from various publications, the first from page 77 of J.W. Burrows's, Essex Units in the War 1914 – 1919, Vol. 1, 1st Battalion The Essex Regiment:

The 88th Brigade supported an attack on H12 and H12a by the 156th Brigade of the 52nd (Lowland) Division, which was only partially successful, the casualties being very heavy. At 1 p.m. Essex received orders to co-operate with the 5th Royal Scots in again assaulting H12. It proved a task of insuperable difficulty, for the trenches were blocked with wounded and by the remainder of the 156th Brigade coming back. At 4 p.m. an attempt was made to bomb the enemy out by working up the communication trenches, but the outlets were held by snipers. Although impeded in this operation by the trenches being filled with casualties, a further effort was made, but it proved unsuccessful, the enemy pouring a heavy fire on front line trenches and on “No man’s land,” which stretched for 300 yards at this point. The losses included Capt. E. O. Warden, 3rd Essex, and 2nd Lieuts. C.A.B. Wood and H. F. Grantham, 1st Essex, killed, and other ranks, 11 killed, 49 wounded, and 12 missing, believed killed. In this engagement the attacking force wore pieces of biscuit tins on their backs. These shone like helios and enabled the artillery to control the protective screen of shrapnel. The enemy counter-attacked in considerable force in the early hours of the 30th, but the Essex were not seriously involved.

A little over two weeks later, on Friday 16th July 1915, The Essex Weekly News published the following article.

Yesterday it was announced that Lieut. Hugo Frederick Grantham, 1st Essex, was killed in action on June 28. Deceased was born in April 1895 and was the eldest son of Captain F. W. and Mrs. Grantham of Beeleigh Abbey, and Grandson of the late Mr. Justice Grantham. Educated at Cheltenham and Sandhurst, he was gazetted to the Essex Regiment in February of this year.

This from Wisden's Almanac:

2nd Lieut. Hugo Frederick Grantham, (1st Essex Regiment), grandson of the late Mr. Justice Grantham, was killed in action at the Dardanelles on June 28, aged 20. He was a very useful cricketer, playing for the Witham C.C., but did not obtain a place in the Eleven at Cheltenham.

The Times also published an obituary shortly after he was killed..

SECOND LIEUTENANT HUGO FREDERICK GRANTHAM, 1st Essex Regiment, eldest son of Captain F W Grantham and Mrs F W Grantham of Beeleigh Abbey, Essex and grandson of the late Mr Justice Grantham, who was born on April 15 1985, was killed at the Dardanelles on June 28. He was educated at Cheltenham where he obtained his football colours. He was also a very promising cricketer, making his century at an excellent match at the Whitham [sic. It should be Witham] Cricket Club, and carrying out his bat. He was gazetted in March of this year from Sandhurst, and commended for exceptional gallantry and coolness under most trying conditions in the action on June 4 by his colonel, and the Brigadier mentioned him in his dispatch.

Finally, De Ruvigny's also published Hugo's biography - adding additional snippets of information - next to the portrait photograph I have included on this page:

GRANTHAM, HUGO FREDERICK, 2nd Lieut, 1st Batt (44th Foot) Essex Regt. eldest s. of Captain Frederick William Grantham, who was killed in action 9 May 1915 (q.v.); b London W, 15 April 1895; educ at Cheltenham College (Head of House), and Sandhurst; gazetted 2nd Lieut Essex Regt 17 Feb 1915; served with the Mediterranean Expeditionary Force at the Dardanelles from end of May, 1915 and was killed in action there 28 June 1915. He was mentioned in Despatches for leading a bombing party, which evicted the Turks out of some British trenches they had taken, unm.

Hugo is buried in Twelve Tree Copse Cemetery about one kilometre south west of the village of Krithia in Turkey. He and his father are commemorated on the war memorials at Barcombe (Sussex) and Maldon (Essex). The photo below shows a detail from the Maldon War memorial.

Frederick William Grantham

The bad quality photo above is that of Captain Frederick William Grantham who was born in South Norwood, Surrey on 10 July 1870. He was the brother of William Wilson Grantham whose biography is included on the Chailey 1914-1918 website. I have not included the biographies of either Frederick or his son Hugo because they were more connected with Barcombe (just outside the Chailey parish boundaries) and Beeleigh in Essex. Nevertheless, both men made the ultimate sacrifice for their King and Country and deserve our remembrance, albeit in a blog entry.

The following information is taken from De Ruvigny’s roll of honour.

GRANTHAM, Capt. Frederick William 2nd Bn Royal Munster Fusiliers. Died 9th May 1915. Son of Sir William Grantham and Emma Grantham, of 100, Eton Square, S.W. and Barcombe Place, Sussex. Joined the volunteers while at Cambridge in 1890 and afterwards the Post Office Rifles in 1893 and the Munster Militia in 1899. Served in the South African War 1900 with the Imperial Yeomanry. Passed into the reserve of Officers 23rd January 1909 but when the European war began was immediately called up and joined the Royal Munster Fusiliers with the rank of Capt. 6th Aug. 1914. Went to the front in France 22nd Sept 1914 and was killed in action near Richebourg L'Avoue 9th May 1915 leading his men in attack on the German trenches early in the morning of that day. He was for three months reported wounded and missing but his body was found by a patrol in August. Panel 43 and 44. His son 2/Lt. Hugo Frederick Grantham also fell and is buried in Twelve Tree Copse Cemetery, Turkey.

The panels referred to above are those on the Le Touret war memorial in France. Obviously, having been found once, Captain Grantham’s body (which we must presume was buried, having been found) was subsequently lost.

On 27th August 1915, The Essex Review wrote:

Captain Frederick William Grantham, Royal Munster Fusiliers, of Beeleigh Abbey, who has been killed in action, was the second son of the late Justice Grantham. Born in July 1870 he was educated at Harrow and Trinity College, Cambridge, and called to the bar in 1894, being subsequently appointed Clerk of Assize on the Oxford Circuit. He was a great traveller in the Far East and an authority on eastern philosophy. He received the King’s medal for his services in the South African war. On the outbreak of war he rejoined his regiment, the Royal Munster Fusiliers, with his old rank, and had been serving with it in Flanders since September. He was reported wounded and missing on May 9, and is now reported killed in action. His latest commission was dated August 6, 1914. The deceased officer’s eldest son, Lieutenant Hugo Frederick Grantham, fell in the Dardanelles on June 28 last.

The panel below, commemorating both men, was erected in All Saints church in Maldon in January 1917. Again, The Essex Review covered the event.

Maldon:- All Saints. A memorial tablet is erected in the church to the memory of Captain Frederick William Grantham 2nd Royal Munster Fusiliers, killed near Richebourg L’Avoué 9th May 1915 aged 45, and his elder son, Hugo Frederick Grantham 2/1st Essex Regiment, killed on the Gallipoli Peninsula 28th June 1915 aged 20.


Frederick’s name also appears on the Barcombe (Sussex) and Maldon (Essex) war memorials.

Three Cornford Brothers Go to War

The title of this post is taken from a privately published history of the same name which was recently sent to me by Stan Cornford. Stan's father Tom Cornford and his uncles Trayton Cornford and John Henry Cornford all served during the First World War.

Trayton and Tom both appear to have joined the Lancers at Roeheath, Chailey in September 1914, both men subsequently transferring to the King's Own Yorkshire Light Infantry. Trayton was killed near Serre on the Somme in November 1916 but Tom later transferred to the 1/10th Manchesters, winning the Military Medal in 1918. Tragically, he died in 1933 when his son was only three years old. He is buried in St Peter's churchyard, Chailey.

John Henry Cornford, the third brother, was a pre-war regular artilleryman who served time in India and appears to have served right through the Great War only to die in England in 1920. He is buried at Deepcut in Surrey. So three brothers, three premature deaths, and all are now commemorated on the Chailey 1914-1918 website.

My grateful thanks to Stan for some fascinating correspondence and Cornford family information. Incidentally, none of the brothers was mentioned in Reverend Jellicoe's monthly roll call of local serving men. Although Tom had been born at Chailey and his brothers at Plumpton, the family had probably moved out of the area a good while before the First World War began.

Chailey Green - June 2008

I stopped by Chailey Green last week and took some photos on what was, after a grim May Bank Holiday Monday, a pretty fine June day. The war memorial was, of course, the first shot I took. For those who don't know Chailey, that's the new vicarage behind the memorial. The old vicarage, the one that Reverend Jellicoe inhabited and stood in front of for the photograph that I've included on his page, is now a private residence that appears to be undergoing renovation. On the day we were there, a huge Marks and Spencer lorry reversed past us and into the driveway there.

Row of cottages next to the new vicarage. I don't know their original name and would be pleased to hear from anybody who can advise me on this.

This property lies opposite the war memorial and, beyond that, the cottages in the previous image.

A somewhat overgrown churchyard and a pretty standard shot of St Peter's. Unfortunately the church was locked - as most British churches tend to be these days - but I've been inside before and probably could have gone inside again had I called at the vicarage.

The grave of John Cecil Glossop Pownall. I really didn't have a chance to look around the graveyard properly. As I mentioned, it was overgrown and I also had my two year old daughter (below) in tow. I did however spot John Pownall's grave - and also that of Margaret Blencowe - and paid my respects there. John's brother, Lionel Pownall, was killed during the First World War but he emerged unscathed, serving as a captain with the Royal Field Artillery.

Click on any of the images for a larger version.

Ernest Stevens and Alice Pointing

I've added a photo of Ernest Stevens and Alice Pointing (above). The couple were married in 1915 and Ernest would serve with the Salvage Corps after the war had ended. Alice's four brothers all served their King and Country and their mother, also Alice Pointing, worked as a cook with Sussex 54 VAD.

The 5th Leicesters learn bomb throwing

Back in the early 1980s, having recently lost my grandfather and regretting that I'd never spoken to him properly about his own First World War experiences, I decided to set out and interview as many surviving veterans as I could find. My introduction to Chailey happened at this time when I was loaned an autograph album kept by a VAD nurse who'd worked with Sussex 54 VAD in Chailey and Newick. But I was principally interested in meeting the old soldiers and over the next ten years or so I probably interviewed or corresponded with about 100 Great War veterans - mostly in the Chelmsford area where I grew up, and at Loughborough where I went to university. I've recently started re-transcribing these tape-recorded interviews and I'll publish extracts here. As far as Chailey goes, it's slightly off tangent, but it is still WW1 and the old soldier tales are too good not to be shared.

So I'll start with Private Harold Shephard of the 5th Leicesters whom I interviewed in Loughborough in June 1984 when he was 88 years old. Mr Shephard joined the TF in 1911 and by 1915 he was in France. Here he is describing a Mills' bomb training course:

"Before we went to Egypt we had reinforcements come up to us at Marseilles. Now we’d been using the Mills bomb for twelve months near enough in the trenches and all the instructions we’d got were pull the pin out, count three and throw it.

Now in the reinforcements that come out we’d got an instructor as had been instructing on this bomb in England and had never thrown one - not the live thing - he’d thrown the dummy. And he come out to us in Marseilles and he says, I’ve come out from England to give you instructions on this bomb. So we all said, well what instructions are there? So he said, I’m coming to that in a minute, let me describe what I’ve come out here for, I’m stationed with the regiment now.

So he says, this is a Number 5 Mills’ Bomb. He says, you unscrew the bottom like this and take it off and at the top of that there’s a little detonator - and it’s only like a bit of electric wire and it’s about an inch long like that and curled up and then goes into the bomb. Now he took it out – we didn’t know nowt about this – he took it out and he says, now look, I’m going to tell you what not to do. So I says, he's pulling us bloody leg, you know, and all this that and the other. He gets this detonator out - and it weren’t only about that high - and he gets a little pocket knife and he says, now this is what I don’t want you soldiers to do. And he just touched the top of it and off went three of his fingers.

He’d been using the dummies in England but as soon as he got out here he was playing with the live stuff. We all said, fancy a bloody man coming out like that and telling us this when we’d been using them for twelve months.

Harold Shephard died in Loughborough in 1988 at the age of 92.

Alice Pointing and Ernest Stevens

Thanks to correspondence from a relative I've been able to fill in additional detail for Alice Pointing and Ernest Stevens (who has languished on my site as E F Stevens for the past two years).

I had always assumed that the Alice Pointing noted as serving as a cook with Sussex 54 VAD was the sister of Frank, George, James and William Pointing. In all likelihood however, it appears that it was in fact their mother. I have made this point on Alice's page.

Alice junior however, married Ernest Frank Stevens in December 1915 and so I am pleased, finally, to be able to reproduce his name in full and also to add additional detail to his page. Two years after initially publishing my research on-line, these small titbits coming through continue to fascinate as well, of course, as building a greater picture of Chailey's protagonists during those Great war years.

Richard William Gibson

I've updated the page for Richard Gibson and added him as another Great War fatality. Chailey Parish Magazine doesn't have an awful lot to say about him. He's mentioned as serving his King and Country in 1914 but by December 1916 he disappears altogether.

Whilst I can't be sure, I feel fairly confident that this man is the same Richard William Gibson who lost his life in September 1916 whilst serving with the 2nd Royal Sussex Regiment. He was a regular soldier (enlisting circa 1904) and an Old Contemptible, having arrived in France at the end of August 1914.

Richard has no known grave and is commemorated on the Thiepval Memorial on the Somme. His name does not appear on the Chailey War Memorial or on the memorial at Hailsham where he was born.

Arthur Hamilton Boyd

The image above was sent to me this morning and shows a slightly blurred Reverend Arthur Hamilton Boyd in 1948. His medal ribbons can clearly be seen.

Medal cards on-line

I noticed today that Ancestry have put the WW1 medal cards on-line. This will be an enormous boon to WW1 researchers not only because the information becomes far more easily accessible, searchable and ultimately cheaper than the information you get direct from the National Archives, but also because the Ancestry photographer has helpfully taken a shot of the back of the card as well. In most instances the back will be blank, but some, like the attached card for my great uncle, Alfred Arthur Nixon, show an address and details of correspondence.

All images are Crown copyright of course, but as this is a non commercial blog and this post is written with the intention of informing and educating, I hope HM will forgive me and not send me to the Tower on this occasion.

69th and 84th Garo Labour Companies

This is most definitely off-topic as far as Chailey is concerned, but in a shining example of shameless self-promotion (aimed as much at search engines as humans), I am flagging up another WW1 website which I have just launched.

The 69th and 84th Garo Labour Companies website is a small Freewebs site which commemorates the men of these two north east Indian labour corps companies during the First World War. A memorial in Tura, (then in the state of Assam, now in Meghalaya), commemorates the 55 labourers who did not return.

As far as Chailey is concerned, I hope to be able to correct the record of another of Chailey's men very soon. I have been in touch with a relative and all being well will be updating the relevant page during the coming week.

William Horace Simmons

William Horace Simmons was another old Chailey soldier overlooked by the Reverend Jellicoe in his monthly roll call of serving parishioners. He originally attested with the 21st Hussars in 1893 and his early service record makes fascinating reading.

Despite brushes with authority, William saw a good deal of service abroad. He was in the “East Indies” (India) between 8th March 1894 and 23rd October 1896 and then went straight to Egypt until 11th November 1899. He was home in England briefly between November 1899 and February 1900 but then sailed for South Africa on 13th March that year to fight the Boers. He returned home on 15th July 1900 (presumably as a result of sickness or wounds) and was discharged in 1901. He was entitled to the Queen’s South Africa Medal.

He enlisted for a second time on 22nd October 1914, this time signing up with the Military Mounted Police at Aldershot and served with this regiment until his discharge from the army on 15th August 1917.

I am surmising that the reason for William’s omission in Chailey Parish Magazine was due to him having moved out of the immediate area many years before. I am happy to remember him at last on the Chailey website.

Fletching British Legion - women's section

Thanks to Geoff Isted in Sussex I've been able to add tiny snippets to two more records. James Brazier and Percy Ireland both served their King and Country during WW1. James was killed in action in March 1918 whilst serving with the Royal Garrison Artillery but Percy survived (albeit with a head wound) and returned to his wife and children in Fletching.

In 1926, James's sister and Percy's wife both joined the women's branch of Fletching British Legion (the Royal had not been added at this point in time), and I am grateful to Geoff for digging out this additional information.

Victor George Ashford - a brief war

Victor George Ashford was born about 1900 in Newick. He appears on the 1901 census as the youngest child of James Thomas Ashford (a fishmonger) and his wife Jane. Three other children are also noted.

Victor's service record more rightly belongs on a Newick commemoration site as he lived at Colonels Bank, Newick. However, his service record notes Colonels Bank as being in Chailey and so I am more than happy to add his name to the Chailey parish roll call.