Trying to get back to a previous life…and a Knitting Vicar

It is so difficult to imagine what it must have felt like to wake up in a World newly at peace after more than four years of war. For those who knew definitively that their friends and relatives were safe, the prospect of their return home at some point in the near future would have been a huge relief – though of course, many families had to wait a surprisingly long time before they were reunited. Others would have been consumed by anxiety about those who were injured, missing or prisoners. Many would have been  traumatised by the loss of their sons, husbands and brothers. Everyone, in our villages, would have known many bereaved families.

Though lighting restrictions were lifted immediately, food and fuel were still in short supply. The prevailing mood, once the exhilaration of the Armistice had dissipated a little, was one of exhaustion. The innocent optimism of 1913 would never return.

There was positive news about Ballinger’s Bridge, however – after only 25 years of concerns about its narrowness, it was being widened! Private funding had been organised by Mr John Ferrabee (‘who at the time was closely connected with the business carried out at Bliss Mills’); Charles Appleby, JP, had contributed, ‘which enabled Sir Aston Lister, JP, CC, the acting County Surveyor, to obtain the sanction of the County Council for the scheme’. Local ‘inhabitants are well-satisfied with the improvements’ to what had been ‘a very dangerous spot’.

Ballinger’s Bridge                                          Ballinger’s Lock

Further up the canal, behind the High Street, there was light relief in the form of a minor accident (which, incidentally, throws an interesting light on the condition of the locks):

Much amusement has been occasioned in the district by the sinking – certain wags suggest that this was due to enemy action – on Friday last of a boat with a full cargo of coal in the Bell Harbour, or Lock, Chalford, thus completely severing water communication between the West and London!…The boat, which is the property of the Stroud Water Company, has been used for the conveyance of coal to the company’s works , that commodity being brought to the boat from the station to a point near the bridge at the bottom of the approach to the railway station. The boat and cargo were safely towed into port, otherwise the lock, preparatory to making the journey to the Works. The boat was temporarily left in the full lock, which leaks considerably, and during the absence of the “hands” the lock emptied, with the result that part of the boat, which had been fastened to the top end of the lock, got onto the sill, and eventually dropped to the bottom of the structure, practically breaking its back. The removal of the obstruction will involve considerable time and labour.

Bell Lock

 

Frank Martin of Chalford was home on leave at this auspicious time. Aquaticus commented, ‘should think he was very acceptable in the army, for he is a dab [sic] on the piano, and the presence of a fellow like that often makes life passable in the barracks’.

(Another pianist!) Roy Essex’s citation for the Military Cross was quoted:

This officer handled the company in a rearguard action under heavy fire, with consummate skill, covering the withdrawal of the Battalion most successfully. Later he held out for 20 hours with his company in a strong point against repeated attacks and point-blank artillery fire.

Several concerts were held – it was, after all, the run-up to Christmas. Australian troops gave one of their popular shows at the Tabernacle Schoolroom, in aid of St Dunstan’s. Miss Marie Philpotts had organised another entertainment in the Church Rooms, in aid of the parcels fund – 1918’s parcels had already been despatched, and servicemen would not return, in many cases, for many months, so would still be cheered by food and other items from home. The Journal remarked on Miss Philpotts’ ‘genius for organisation’ and reported:

The room was crowded long before the appointed time…Wedged into a very small compass the audience waited patiently for the curtain to rise, the kindly Vicar of the Parish [presumably Addenbrooke] setting an example of industry to his parishioners, and incidentally providing them with a little amusement, by producing his knitting and serenely plying his needles.

The concert raised a very reputable £15 14/-.

The VTC had served its purpose. Aquaticus lamented ‘…we think it a shame that such a body or Corps should at any time be allowed to vanish completely’.

There continued to be sad news, however. The death was reported of Ernest Halliday, of Chalford, who before the war had worked as a fitter in the FES Motor Works, Gloucester. He had enlisted on 12th August 1914 in the Royal Field Artillery with his friend David Griffin (also from Chalford). As mechanics, they were eligible for enhanced pay. David Griffin was killed in 1916. Ernest survived the fighting, but, while based in Salonika, fell ill with the influenza. He was admitted to hospital on 6th November, and died on 8th November, aged 29.

 

 

Odds and too many ends.

At the end of October, it was reported that Harold Pearce, son of Mr Charles Pearce of Chalford, had received his commission and transferred to the Machine Gun Corps. He was an old Chalford Hill Schoolboy, who had gone on to Marling, trained at Oxford in the Officer Training Corps and gone out to France initially with the Public School Battalion.

The Chalford VTC were now resplendent in their new uniforms and ‘bid fair to become one of the smartest platoons in the district’. Smartest as in ‘best outfitted’, perhaps, and not quite so much in other ways, as a couple of weeks later, the paper carries an account – pure situation comedy material – of their activities, when a ‘scout’ plane landed in Field Place Farm, Bisley between 4 and 5 o’clock one afternoon, the pilot having become lost following the railway line. The landing area proved not to have been large enough, and he brought down a wall and split the propellor. ‘P C Hayward was quickly to the spot’ (it must all have been hugely exciting on a dull November day), and summoned the local VTC Corps to guard the plane. Chalford had the first duty – 2hours each, in pairs:

“The night was very unpleasant, and some amusing experiences have been related in regard to the changing of the guard during the night, it being absolutely impossible, owing to the fog, for the men going on duty to locate the machine without shouting to their colleagues.”

The dark, the fog, enthusiastic middle-aged men – so easy to imagine…

The weather had closed in – the paper commented any prospect of St Luke’s Little Summer had vanished in gales and heavy rain.

At the beginning of November, Fred Couldrey and Charles Herbert came home on (pre-embarkation?) leave – ‘looking very fit’. Other local lads home included Harold Gardiner, son of George Gardiner of Rack Hill, Alfred Stephens – who had run a successful saddlery business in the parish –  and Stoker Gleed, who ‘has had many exciting and interesting experiences both in and out of action, and his many friends have greatly enjoyed the stories he has been able to tell them’.

The Battle of the Somme was limping to its bloody end, taking the lives of still more men.

On the 17th November, the paper reports a meeting at Chalford Baptist Tabernacle, at which condolences were expressed to Mr Frank Griffin on the death of his son at the front. David Griffin, who had worked as a turner in an engineering works, was living in the family home, Woodview, Dark Lane at the time of the 1911 census. He had enlisted in the Royal Field Artillery during the second week of the war, saw service at Gallipoli, Salonika and in France, where he was killed on 25th October, at the age of 21. His officer wrote: “All the time I knew him he did his work conscientiously, cheerful [sic] and well. He was typical of the best men we have, always willing to lend a hand at any job, always cheerful and smiling, whether living was rough or not. He was a brave man and a good soldier.”

David Griffin

Alec Andrews, the 21 year old son of the head gamekeeper at Lypiatt Park, was killed the same day; by the same shell which killed another local man, Sergeant A Rigsby of Woodchester. The paper carried a photograph and a tribute to him on 1st December. He had attended Eastcombe village school, played football and cricket in the village teams, and had sung in the choir at St Augustine’s. His ‘genial manner and straightforward conduct made him very popular’. Having learned his skills as a gardener at Lypiatt Park, he had taken a ‘responsible position’ much  further afield, on an estate in Dublin, but at the outbreak of war had returned to join the Gloucesters . Despite suffering from scarlet fever while training, he became a successful bomber, flag signaller and machine gunner. He had survived Loos  – ‘Twice he was left standing alone,his chums having been shot. On another occasion he had a narrow escape from a shell which killed five men by him…’ His brother Wilfred, who had emigrated to Canada, served with the Canadian Expeditionary force, and managed to meet Alec in the trenches shortly before the latter’s demise. Wilfred kept a diary throughout the war, which survives.

Ernest Young, of the Gloucesters, son of Mr Young of Chalford Vale, and brother of Ashley (whose miraculous survival thanks to the mirror and the Bible I have written about earlier) was killed on 4th November. His wife had received a letter from his officer explaining how he had been part of a large working party that night “and this necessitated the crossing of an open plain behind the British front line. The work was completed in safety, but on the return journey the Germans opened a heavy barrage fire across the path, and one shrapnel shell burst immediately above their heads, killing Private Young and another man and wounding the lieutenant and the guide…” Lieutenant Stone was quoted as saying,’Personally, I feel I have lost one of my best and most willing helpers, and a man of fine personality’. Ernest David Allen Young, who had grown up in the village, where his father was night watchman at Sevilles Mill, is not the ‘ E Young’ on our monument, but is remembered on the memorial in Kingswood, where he had moved as an adult. Given the rather tenuous (and in a few cases, indiscoverable) links to the area of some of the others who are remembered here, it seems a pity that Ernest Young, whose brothers remained local to Chalford, is not formally listed  in the village of his birth.

Ernest Young

The Kingswood local paper, the ‘Gazette’, supplied more details about him:

“Pte Young enlisted under the Derby scheme and was called to the colours with the ‘married’ groups. He went to the front with the Glo’sters about eight weeks ago, visiting his home for the last time a fortnight previously. His age was 31…he came to this district at the time Charfield mills were opened by Messrs Tubbs, Lewis and Co,and was by trade a wood and bone-cutter. He was of an exceedingly quiet disposition, and was much liked by his fellow workers, indeed, by all who knew him…Besides his wife, two children, aged seven and five respectively, are left to mourn his loss.”

The deaths column of the ‘Stroud News’ on 15th December carried the following notice:

“HARMAN – November 13th, killed in Naval Division in France, Wilfred Harman, son of Mrs Ricketts, of Dudbridge, aged 18 years.”

The ‘With the Colours’ column picked up on this news, and further commented: ‘The gallant fellow was only 18 years of age and he had been in the service 18 months’. Wilfred had been brought up in the White Horse Inn, at the top of Cowcombe Hill, which his parents kept, and had attended Christ Church School. His naval record card (which of necessity carries the wrong year of birth) describes him as being 5 foot six and a half inches tall, with a fresh complexion, blue eyes and brown hair. He was a moulder by profession. He was killed on the first day of the Battle of Ancre, when the assault against German lines was  launched in  deep mud, fog, rain and against relentless machine gun fire.

outside White Horse, Frampton Mansell

William Woodward, a gunner in the 45th Brigade of the Royal Field Artillery, wounded early in November, died on the 28th of his injuries. He had grown up in Middle Lypiatt, and had been in the Reserve at the start of the war – ‘a brave soldier, a great favourite in his Company’. Two brothers, Fred and Edward, were currently at the Front, another, Ernest, in the Marines, and two younger ones ‘have also offered themselves and are keen to join up. Truly a sterling fighting family. All the lads are old boys of Bisley School’.

Also killed on the Somme in September was Richard Blackaby, son of the pastor at Eastcombe Baptist Church. He had never lived here, but sympathy is extended to his father in the columns of the ‘Stroud News’, and he is listed on the Eastcombe war memorial (as well as that in Westerham, Kent). De Ruvigny’s Roll of Honour has a brief biographical sketch of him – born in Stow on the Wold, in 1891, he had been educated at Witney Grammar School in Oxfordshire. In 1911, the census records him boarding in Bedford, and working as a bank clerk. He enlisted in the East Kent Regiment in February 1916, and died of wounds at the casualty clearing station at Meault, near Albert, on the 18th September.

 

 

 

More about the Baptists

The Baptist church was a powerful presence in late 19th and early 20th century Chalford. It attracted a large congregation, both from the immediate village and from further along the valley, in Frampton Mansell, where Charles Clark, JP, a great benefactor to the Baptist cause, lived in a fine house called the Downs.

I decide to pay a visit to the Archives in Gloucester, where I know there to be a  deposit of Baptist records, to see whether  anything throws any light on the individual men from the Tabernacle who left the security of their life here for the violent and unpredictable field of war. The Archive catalogue can be searched online these days, which is handy. What has also changed since my last visit to Alvin St many years ago is the system for requesting documents, which can only be done once an hour now. I arrive, typically, five minutes after the magic moment. Still, gives me time to absorb the atmosphere (determined concentration).

The minutes of meetings during the relevant period would be of huge interest to anyone studying the form and content of non-conformist services during the early 20th century. I, however, find my eyes skidding unaccountably across the formulaic accounts of texts preached on and hymns sung, ending with thanks to the members who sang or played music (usually Beryl Smart, LRAM, on the pianoforte). I have obviously misunderstood the nature of the Baptist minutes book!  Every now and again, however,  the outside world does intrude. On October 4th 1914: “It was decided to have a Roll of Honour so as to inscribe the names of our members upon it who have gone to the war”. On July 16th 1916: “A vote of sympathy and condolence was proposed by the Secretary and seconded by Mr TC Richens for the loss which he had sustained in the death of his youngest son Private Eber (sic) Webster who was killed in France.” Another such vote was passed on November 12th that year, to Mr Frank Griffin on the death of his son David “who was killed at the Front” and on December 17th to Mr and Mrs JW Workman of Cowley near Cheltenham, whose son Willie, formerly of France Lynch and a member of the church, had been killed in action. Possibly these formal recognitions of loss were comforting, though (to me with my modern sensibilities) they seem rather distant. In March 1917,  JH Legg Esq (Military Representative of Cirencester and District) visited to give “a very able and instructive address on his visit to France and the trenches”. On October 14th 1917, sympathy is being expressed to Mr Charles Pearce “in the sad news he had received” about the wounding in the head and face of his son Harold (Harold does not appear among the dead, one can only hope that he made a decent recovery and wasn’t too disfigured). On September 8th, 1918, “the Secretary announced the death of Pte Albert King a former member and voiced the sympathy of the members”. That is it – the only references in four and a bit years to the cataclysmic events shaking the world outside the Tabernacle. What makes this seem stranger is that quite a few of their active members were lost during these years.

Thankfully, the Annual Reports of the Baptist year, 1913-20, provide a little more human interest. Written every January, in review of the events of the past year, they give some insight into the effect of the war on the congregation. The report dated January 1916 refers to 1915 as ‘a year unparalleled in bloodshed and war lust’, but is ‘glad to say that the war has not touched the peace of our churchyard’ – a fact it rather poignantly attributes to the power of prayer. Another paragraph relates that ‘much interest was awakened in our Pastor’s sermon in which was mentioned the alleged appearance of the Angels at Mons’ (a popular and persistent myth at the time, which seems to be traceable to a short story by Arthur Machen).

1917’s report is far more raw:

Sorrow has filled our hearts as the news of one and another snatched from us, lads who have been with us  in our prayers and hopes from their childhood.

On July 23rd, there was a large and well-attended memorial service for Harry Taysum, Frank Arnold and Heber Webster. In November, there was another service to remember Mrs Verrinder, a Sunday school teacher who had recently died, and David Griffin, ‘one of our members who had been killed in action’.

In January 1918, 13 church members are ‘serving with the colours’. The opening paragraphs mention how letters from those at the front ‘tell us that the writers believe that they owe their safety to our prayers. Most of these men are relying on us as a congregation to pray for them.’ Unfortunately, despite these prayers, on October 28th there is another memorial service, this time mourning the deaths at the Front of Charles Pidgeon and Frank Shilham.

Obviously, by the time the next report comes due in January 1919, the war is over. The walls of the Baptist schoolroom ‘are adorned with photographs of some of our old boys. We thank Mrs Carter [the Pastor’s wife] for her loving thought in making this collection. These in time should be cherished and valued as among our most sacred possessions.’ The report continues:

The war robbed us in 1918 of two of our members. Albert Griffin fell in action. He was one of those who had early dedicated his life to our Lord. His was one of those faces thoughtful, bright, frank, fearless that an artist would delight to picture as an ideal typical English Crusader. If any man went to the front impelled by duty, impelled by the sense that he was fighting for righteousness, freedom truth and liberty our brother Albert was one. We grieve for the loss  of one who had such potentialities for service in Christ’s World but we are proud of his record proud that such a man was among our members.

This lovely testimony, so much of its time, is almost the only character sketch we have from this source. None of the others are written of in personal terms at all, and the other lad to die in 1918, Albert King, is described far more concisely: ‘he had by his quiet, consistent life won his way into our hearts.’

Juliet spotted a picture of Chalford Tabernacle senior branch of the International Order of the Good Templars, 1911, in one of Stanley Gardiner’s compilations of old photographs (The Archive Photographs series: Chalford to Sapperton, Chalford Publishing Company, 1995). It shows about forty men and women, many of them resplendent in  arcane-looking sashes, all looking very serious. Roughly half the men sport the remarkable moustaches so fashionable at the time. Everyone in the photograph is identified. Less than eight years later, seven of those young men would be dead, victims of a war none of them could have forseen on that day in 1911. It’s an odd sensation, peering into those faces, all intent on the photo being taken. It’s strange to see the names on the memorial brought to life, in all their ordinariness, their slight vanities (those moustaches!), their neat clothing. They look straight out at you, of course they do – that’s one of the conventions of photographs of the time. They meet your gaze. You feel you have a duty to them. Trevor Webster. William Gardiner. Albert Griffin. Percy Tyler. Charles Herbert. Albert King. Charles Pidgeon.