sharing Solihull's local history
Four local men lost their lives on 13th October 1915. They have no known grave and are commemorated on the Loos Memorial:
19-year-old John Alfred Cross was one of four brothers who had been inmates in Marston Green Cottage Homes and went on to serve in the First World War. He joined the Rifle Brigade on 2nd September 1914, being posted to France on 22nd August 1915 after spending two weeks in a military hospital in Purfleet with an abscess on his tongue. He received a gunshot wound to the chest on 5th October 1915, dying of wounds at the Australian Hospital, Wimereux, France on 11th October 1915 according to his service record. The Commonwealth War Graves Commission and the Register of Soldiers’ Effects both give his date of death as the 10th October. His brother Harry was also killed in the war, whilst brothers Francis James and Thomas William were apparently war casualties but survived.
John and Harry are both commemorated locally on a war memorial plaque that was hung outside the chapel on the site, which later became Chelmsley Hospital.
The war memorials at Catherine-de-Barnes and Solihull both include the name of Lance Corporal James Uriah Hill of the Coldstream Guards, although his local connection with the area isn’t known. He was killed in action at Vermelles, on 9th October 1915.
He was born in Saltley to parents James Uriah and Mary Ann (née Wragg) who had married at Nechells in 1877. His birth was registered in 1892, although there is a slight discrepancy in age with other official records suggesting a date of birth of 1889/1890. The couple did have another son called James Uriah, born 8th September 1883 at Nechells but this child seems to have died aged one, and is buried in Witton Cemetery, Birmingham. It was common practice in the past for a child to have the same name as a dead sibling to ensure that a favourite name continued for another generation. Mary Ann herself died in 1900, aged 44, and James Uriah married Sarah Clay in 1905.
Frank Baulcombe was born in Kenilworth on 18th February 1891, the fourth child and eldest son of the ten children born to parents Frederick (an insurance agent, previously a confectioner and baker) born in Eastbourne, Sussex and Selina (née Clarke), born at Moreton Bagot, Warwickshire. The couple had married at Claverdon on 5th January 1886. Frederick was a widower – he had married his first wife, Mary Page, on 31st January 1882 in Kenilworth and their only child, Marian Bertha Baulcombe, was born in Leamington at the end of the year. Mary died in 1884, aged 28.
Frank, a gardener at Umberslade before the war, was killed in action at Neuve Chappelle on 5th October 1915, whilst serving as a Private with the Oxford and Buckinghamshire Light Infantry. He was 24 years old.
20-year-old Private Alfred Abel Hall, a former boy scout, was killed in action on 4th October 1915 whilst serving with the 1st Battalion Royal Warwickshire Regiment in France. He was born in Honiley, Warickshire in 1896 but had moved to Heronfield, Knowle by the time of the 1901 when he was four years old. The family was still at Heronfield in 1911 when 14-year-old Alfred Abel was recorded as a farm labourer.
Albert Herbert Farrow, who seems to have been known as Herbert, was born in Roughton, Norfolk on 25th August 1885 to parents Jonathan and Sarah Farrow. He enlisted as a regular soldier with the Coldstream Guards on 10th January 1905 and served five years with the colours, including two years in Egypt. He then joined the Reserve, when he became a gamekeeper. On the 1911 census he is shown as living at Marston Green and his occupation is recorded as under gamekeeper.
Private Frederick Thomas Gardner, 9th Battalion, Royal Warwickshire Regiment, died of wounds on 1st October 1915 aboard the hospital ship, Formosa. Born in Crewkerne, Somerset, on 17th September 1896, he was the elder of the two children of parents, Thomas (a butcher) and Elizabeth (née Dunster) who had married in Winchester district in 1894. His brother, Edwin James (1898-1950) was born in Yeovil on 20th September 1898.
Private William Burley, 10th (Service) Battalion, Duke of Wellington’s Regiment, died of wounds on 30th September 1915. He was born on 5th November 1895 in Islington, London and was the youngest of nine children born to George (a hairdresser) and Elizabeth (née Mocock) who had married at St Mark’s, Shoreditch on 19th December 1882.
George Lindon was born in 1891 in Packwood, the only son of the four surviving children of Daniel, a farmer and gardener, and his wife, Charlotte Eliza (nee Hull). George became a gardener at Knowle Hall but joined the Army within a month of the outbreak of war. He was killed in action, aged 24, on 28th September 1915, serving as a Private with the 2nd Battalion The Buffs (East Kent Regiment).
Two local officers, both aged 21, died of wounds on 27th September 1915. Second Lieutenant Archibald Ure Buchanan, who lived in Olton, died in Flanders whilst serving with the Gordon Highlanders, and Lieutenant Albert William Buchan Carless, who had been a boarder at Packwood Haugh school, died in France whilst serving with the Middlesex Regiment.
Solihull Life 