Born in Moreton in 1885, Alfred Howes was the eldest of ten children to Alfred and Elizabeth Howes. Leaving life as an agricultural farm labourer behind him, Alfred joined the Oxford and Bucks Light Infantry, 1st Battalion, in 1907 (Service Number 8434), and travelled to India, where the battalion had been based since 1903. Serving […]
Alfred Thomas Heley was born in early 1914 the son of Alfred and Ethel Heley (nee Winstone) of Franklins Farm, Ickford Road, Shabbington, Bucks. Prior to joining the regular army, he was employed by Messrs Holland & Son, printers of Thame, and was also a regular member of the Thame Cricket Club, ‘A’ team. Alfred […]
John Robert Ing was born in Long Crendon in Autumn 1917 to parent John R and Dorothy Ing (nee Warner), where he lived with his family until his marriage. He excelled in all forms of sport at school and captained the school for two seasons when playing in the Anthony-Birrell Cup competition. Prior to the war he was […]
Arthur Robert Howland was born in Thame in 1897. His parents William Watts and Annie Edden Howland (nee Orpen) had recently returned to live in Thame, after several years in Wollongong, Australia. His father was a successful local builder, and in 1911 they were living in 23 Queens Road. Arthur was the youngest of four […]
James Hobbs was born at States Farm, Medmenham, Buckinghamshire on 19th September 1886, one of four children to James and Edith Hobbs. His father was a farmer and dealer in cattle. He attended Lord Williams’s School in Thame as a boarder, where he was known as “Jimmie” Hobbs, and later served four years in the […]
Albert Victor Higgins was born in Moreton, Thame in 1890, the youngest of four children of Arthur and Elizabeth Higgins. In 1911 he was a gardener, living in North Street, Thame, but when he enlisted at Oxford with the Army Service Corps in November 1915, he was in the employ of Mrs West of the […]
Algernon Evelyn Hemmings was born in Oxford on 12th August 1883 where his parents James and Fanny (nee Stowe) lived in the St Ebbes district. He was educated in Oxford but was employed as a stoker at Gosport gas works when he married Ada Langridge in July 1907 at Alverstocke Church, Hampshire. By 1912 when he joined the […]
Born in 1881 in Portswood, a tithing of the parish of South Stoneham (now part of Southampton), Walter Sidney Harris was the eldest of 3 children for his father Walter Sidney and mother Frances. In the 1890’s the family were living in Shirburn, near Thame, and Walter was a pupil at Lord Williams Grammar School. […]
Richard Francis Gower was the son of Herbert Charles Alfred and Ethel Marion Gower (nee Francis). He was born in Market Deeping, near Bourne, Lincolnshire in 1916, where his father was a pharmacist and optician. By 1926, his father was running a pharmacy practice in 95 High Street, Thame and Richard was admitted to Lord […]
Frederick James Goodman was born in 1878 the son of William and Esther Goodman of Back Lane, Chipping Norton, one of eleven children. In 1901 he was lodging in Thame where he worked as a rope maker at Putmans. He married Ellen Carter White, a widow, at St Mary’s Church, Thame in the summer of […]