Author Archives: winc21

Bertie George King Is Killed At Neuve Chapelle: by Win Bourne

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bertie 001

Killed in Action  aged 27 at Neuve Chapelle.
Listed on Panel 44 at La Touret Memorial, France

Bertie was born in 1890, the only son of Alfred G King and his wife Elizabeth (known as Kate) nee Aslett. They had a daughter Dorothy who was just a year old when Bertie made his appearance. The family lived in Newbury Street, Whitchurch and his Dad was a bricklayer. Kate gave birth to two more   daughters, Ethel in 1892 and Alice Daisy in 1893.

Sadly, within the following few years, baby Ethel perished and then both parents passed away, so the three children were separated and raised by various family members in Whitchurch.

Eleven-year-old Bertie lived with his paternal grandmother of 72, Emma King (who was a laundress), and his Uncle John, a bricklayer’s labourer, in Newbury Street. Both 13-year-old Dorothy (known as Dolly) and sister Alice Daisy (aged 7) were looked after by their maternal grandparents, George and Mary Aslett in London Street, along with their cousin Albert Edward Aslett, who was also 7 years old. So the siblings at least remained within easy walking distance of each other.

Ern + Emily King (RHS) at cress beds

Ernest and Emily King at watercress beds in 1920s, from SMB history CD

Granddad George worked on the watercress beds in what came to be a family tradition.As they grew up, the girls continued to live and work in Whitchurch, while Bertie began working at the watercress beds in Hurstbourne Priors, lodging with the Redman family in rooms, part of the house called Crystal Abbey, on the opposite side of the road in the 1911 census. (Was the name a joking reference to the Crystal Palace?)

Crystal Abbey

Extract from 1936 sale map of part of the Portsmouth Estate. Courtesy Hampshire Record Office 15M84/3/1/4/6

At the onset of war Bertie went to Winchester where he enlisted as a rifleman in the 2nd Battalion. Rifle Brigade. His regiment took part in the Battle of Neuve Chapelle which began on the 10th March 1915 when he sustained fatal injuries.

His sisters looked in disbelief at the cold facts of his listed possessions, the last bit of paper summoning up the way officialdom looked at him:

Personal effects Bertie George King

St Mary Bourne School – A new term in 1915: Win Bourne

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1882 school

Headmaster Evans looked out of the classroom window pensively. He wondered just how many children would arrive at the school gate this miserable, cold January morning. He wouldn’t blame the young ones if they stayed at home in the warm. But then he knew that, in some cases, they would be warmer in school than they would in their homes, so he had ignited the fires in the classrooms very early that day in an effort to remove the chill.

He knew from previous years that the numbers would be lower than they should be as some children may have no coats, some no boots- some lacking in both, poor little souls. Even in the finer weather the older children were often missing from class, the girls being kept at home to look after their younger siblings while their parents were both working in the fields or farms, and the boys working alongside their parents – all to earn a few more shillings.

According to the law, if children did not attend school for any reason bar illness, he was supposed to inform the attendance officer, Mr John Page. But he knew in his heart that he wouldn’t do that – times were so difficult for families in the valley at the moment he had no intention of causing them more problems.

John Henry Evans had been teaching at the St Mary Bourne elementary school since 1896 when, at the tender age of 33, he arrived with his widowed mother Anne. He had been born in Bridgend, Glamorgan to Anne and her husband David, a blacksmith in the town.

In October 1905 he had married his wife Victoria in Pontypridd, Glamorgan, and brought her to live at the school house. She was a Somerset lass 7 years younger than him and in 1910 they had a lovely son called Owen.

As he stood at the classroom window, John reflected on his past years at the school, remembering some of the pupil’s faces as they had first appeared. The Sellwoods, the Randalls, the Bunces, the Allens and many many more – all had sat cross-legged in rows on the classroom floor- some in the old school across the road – singing their alphabets and chanting their times tables.

As the terms progressed the children had grown in stature, as well as in their knowledge. Some had thrilled him with their academic capabilities, or their musicality, while others were totally non-academic and couldn’t wait to attain the age that they could leave school and start earning a living.

Years later – he remembered with a smile – he had been walking along the street towards St Peter’s Church with his wife and son, when a confident young man, driving a horse and cart, greeted him with a huge smile and said “Morning Sir, Ma’am” as he tipped his cap to them and he had recognised the lad as being one of his old pupils.

He remembered standing at Summerhaugh and listening to the Salvation Army band playing. The young girls among the crowd were singing along with the band, while the lads stayed self-consciously yet nonchalantly at the back by the George Inn. As the boys tapped their toes to the songs, he recognised that they were similar to the tunes that he had taught most of them himself at the Sunday school when they were small.

Still in a reflective mood, he reminisced another, more recent occasion, when, once again at Summerhaugh, he had observed Lt Col Cooper speechifying to the lads, encouraging them to “Take the King’s shilling and answer the call to arms”.

Suddenly, coming to his senses and the reality of this cold January morning, he realised that the classroom was filling up with steaming, thawing, small children. He looked at his watch and said to himself “Oh well, I’d better get outside and ring the school bell or some of the stragglers will be late for assembly”

“No Mr Page,” he thought to himself ” you can stay in the warm behind your shop counter – you’ll get no call from me this morning.”

Kate And Her Able Seaman (Part Two): by Win Bourne

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St Mary Bourne centre 1930 via English Heritage

 

Christmas 1914 was over and Kate Turnell (née Loader) was very worried because she had not received any news from her beloved George in weeks. They had married in the summer of 1910 in the village church, St Peter’s, and she was used to his absences when he was at sea. She knew that, though he loved being in the Navy, his heart was with her and that he would be at her side as soon as possible.

 

Kate used to set aside a couple of hours twice a week to write to him and had regularly received loving replies which she looked forward to enormously. Now the war had been going on for months, and although the gossip in the village had once been that it would be all over before the festivities began, there was still no sign of a cessation.

 

Until recently George had been relatively safe and sound as he had been based in HMS Vernon – onshore in Portsmouth – had been able to get home to her quite often. Since he had embarked on the ship HMS Lynx in June this year, however, she had no idea where he was or when she would next see him. On his last weekend leave he had seemed subdued and not quite his cheerful self, though he gave no explanation for this. In the latest letter she had received from him when the ship had gone to sea, all he could tell her was that it was heading ‘somewhere in the North Sea’.

 

Both of Kate’s brothers, Freddie and Bert, had recently joined the Army and were now in training and would probably be serving somewhere in Europe very soon. They had both looked forward to ‘doing their bit’ for King and Country along with their pals, much to their Mum’s and Dad’s mixed feelings.

 

Kate had gone back to live with her parents at the cottage in New Barn Farm: staying and helping them seemed to be the most sensible thing to do while George and her brothers were away, though she still rented a small cottage nearby for when her husband came home.

 

On Sundays, when Kate attended services at St Peter’s with her Mum and Dad, it had become noticeable that there were fewer young men in the congregations and that the parents and sweethearts of the lads were subdued. After church some folk were discussing letters that they had received from their older sons in which they had described the dreadful conditions in which they were fighting.

 

Even though these were professional soldiers, many having fought previously in the Boer War, they had never experienced the long, cold nights with continuous driving rain, the muddy trenches in which they huddled being permanently pumped out. They wrote of the horrors of seeing their comrades injured or even dying alongside them.

 

The villagers had heard of the death of Sidney Gunnell in Flanders,  and were sympathetic to the worried parents and family of Fred Day, also serving in Flanders, who had just been notified by the authorities that he had been ‘missing’ since October and had now been pronounced dead.

 

The parents and wives of the younger men, who had been so keen to enlist and were now in training, were dreading the thought that their loved ones might soon be living under similar horrid circumstances.

 

Mothers and wives were busy at home knitting warm balaclavas, scarves and gloves to send to the front in an effort to give the boys some comfort. Fathers and brothers were working the extra hours to compensate for their absent sons and siblings. After all, animals still needed feeding, milking and shoeing and fields still needed to be worked on. No matter what was going on in the rest of the world, life in St Mary Bourne and the rest of the valley had to continue as well it could until their men returned.

 

Kate prayed that 1915 would bring peace once more.

Laura The Landlady: by Win Bourne

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The Bridge c1925

James Willshire had been running the alehouse The Plough for several years with the help of his wife Margaret, who was four years older than him. He had been an innkeeper and master brewer for many years;  his father had taught him the brewing trade, which he had combined with being a cooper.willshire 1911Now in his sixty-third year and with his legs not so good, James was still able to change the barrels when needed, putting full barrels on the racks and taking the empties out to the store at the back of the pub. He sat each evening with his one pint, along with the other old regulars, puffing away on their pipes and discussing the harvest- the cost of feed etc. and other village gossip.

James and his wife Margaret had worked together all their married life, and, as their two sons Victor and Ernest had left home to follow their own careers, they decided to train Laura in the art of innkeeping, enabling them both to take life a little easier. Laura had done well at school and was quick with numbers. She was friendly and polite and very willing to learn. Initially Margaret kept Laura behind the counter, teaching her how to pull a pint, how to measure a spirit drink and, most importantly, how to deal with customers.

“Always be ready to listen when a customer feels like talking, but never offer your own opinion”, was one of her maxims.  “Never repeat what one customer says, to another”, was another. “Let them do the talking and you do the listening”, she would advise. Then she might promptly lean on the bar and whisper to a customer “did you hear that…….”

Laura, now 26 years old,  ran the inn almost singlehandedly, though of course her father was still the owner.  She employed a pot man; though employed was not quite the correct description for their arrangement – he would collect the empty pots and jugs from the tables in the bar and outside in the yard, and also sweep up the sawdust after closing time and lay fresh for the next day – as payment she gave him a free pint of ale with some bread and cheese each midday and maybe a bowl of broth for dinner,  so he was grateful for her generosity. Not that you would know this, as he was a morose old man with very little to say and grunted replies to anyone who spoke to him.

The young lads of the valley often gathered on the bridge on the square after their various days’ work, mostly still in their working clothes and heavy boots, the smithy’s apprentice with his shirt spotted with burn marks from the forge, the thatcher with bits of straw in his hair or poking from his cap, and the stable hand smelling strongly of horses.

Their most popular conversation was in which of the armed forces they would prefer to be enlisted,  which regiment or battalion they would choose. Some wanted to be with the horse, some with the rifle, and some on the high seas. All were very keen, as soon as they reached the age of 18, that they would be off to the Drill Hall in Andover to collect the King’s shilling. The older men sitting outside the ale house would listen, saying nothing. Their memories of their time in the Second Boer War, nay some even in the first, and the horrors they saw and maybe suffered there, were etched in their brains and carried heavily in their hearts.

How could they pass that knowledge and experience on to these young men? To persuade them that war might not be the great adventure they all dreamed of. They knew they couldn’t, so the old chaps carried on puffing their pipes, chewing their baccy and drinking their beer.

 

Notes

-James Willshire is shown in the 1911 census as occupying The Plough, having been the proprietor of a pub in Bradford on Avon in 1901; he is still there in the 1912 trade directory but at some point before 1920 he had moved again, this time to The Railway Inn (now The Bourne Valley Inn).

-We do not know the identity of ‘the pot man’ but The Plough was used by the farmers and was a busy pub at the centre of the village. Laura would not have been working on her own and the employment of a pot man seems a reasonable inference.

The Conservation Area Description says:

The Old Plough, formerly an inn, dates from 17th and 18th century. Although only of one-storey and attic, the significant length of the building is emphasised by its steeply pitched, long thatched roof slopes, and simple elevational treatment. Of intrinsic architectural merit, its location at the river crossing, and its dominance of views through the space, makes it a key building in the Conservation Area.

The photograph of The Plough, behind the bridge over the Bourne, is again one of those that came to me without indication as to copyright owner. If this is you, please contact us in the comments below so that we can properly acknowledge you or, if you prefer, remove it from this blog.

Our New Contributor

This is the first of what we hope will be many posts by Win Bourne, a ‘member’ of our history group. Thank-you, Win!

Win