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Remembered Today:

Dorset military base - Which establishment was in "The Stores", Wool, Wareham ?


davidbohl

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Which establishment was in "The Stores", Wool, Wareham please ?

 

Death notice of a mother listing her son's address.

1697474417_Screenshot2018-08-26at16_55_53.png.103619042cf183d3001c02dd9d2c0561.png

 

Could it be connected to a T/Lt Reginald Harding of the Army Ordnance Corps LG 10th Nov 1915 ?

https://www.thegazette.co.uk/London/issue/29361/supplement/11139

 

Thanks

Dave

Edited by davidbohl
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Dave, I may be missing something about your question and your use of the word "establishment", but I assume that The Stores was the home address of Reginald Harding and that it provided groceries and the like. My first search of the National Archives Medal Index Cards produced 40 "Reginald Hardings", my second 44, but I didn't spot a Reginald Frederick Harding. Was your man even a soldier? I wonder if he owned the stores and his death meant that his business interests in it had to be sorted out?

 

No doubt the Forum's genealogical experts will offer something more useful about him - but may appreciate a little more info from you.

 

Moonraker

 

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I tried a good few months ago on GWF to see if he we could trace him as he was a a schoolteacher in Liverpool and according to NUT 1914-18 served in ww1.

The LG entry Oct 1917 was to do with the death of his mother and her will(not his death), and I was wondering whether "The Stores" might have been to do with the Bovington camp and tank training. Original post here:-

 

 

Thanks

Dave

 

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Here are the entries for Wool, near Wareham in the Kelly's Directory editions for 1911 and 1915.  No sign of Harding I'm afraid.

 

Bovington Camp was close by, as you are aware, but I'd be surprised to see a military stores used as an executor's address.

 

No sign of him in Wool in the 1911 Census either.  I have not looked more widely than Wool.

 

1911

575095275_Wool-KellysDorset1911p_257.jpg.c3886b2143b2d1323d2355e32239a920.jpg

 

 

 

1915

787909090_Wool-KellysDorset1915p_255.jpg.813863e6d26a09a9b12c66f640debd08.jpg

1665937496_Wool-KellysDorset1915p_256.jpg.8977129169cc1b1a975c5c401a0b2048.jpg

 

Mark

 

 

 

 

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Thanks Mark,

he was on the 1911 census living with his parents and teaching in Liverpool, Wool seems an odd place to be if it wasn't for the military in 1917.

 

Dave

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He could have been lodging at 'The Stores' either while teaching or attached to Bovington Camp,though if the latter, then billeting might be the more appropriate word.

 

Unfortunately neither the 1901, nor 1911 Census, nor either of the Kelly's Directory volumes mention the names the various shops were known by.

 

Here's the Kelly's data on the local schools for info ...

1911

742739656_Wool-KellysDorset1911p.257(Schools).jpg.0b772fd0f652e6f267f103a55637c579.jpg

 

1915

940648839_Wool-KellysDorset1915p.255(Schools).jpg.22c634775787dea17b7b212fb54c52e8.jpg

 

 

 

 

 

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33 minutes ago, MBrockway said:

Here are the entries for Wool, near Wareham in the Kelly's Directory editions for 1911 and 1915.  No sign of Harding I'm afraid...

 

23 minutes ago, davidbohl said:

Wool seems an odd place to be if it wasn't for the military in 1917.

I imagine that the 1915 Kelly's Directory for Dorset was compiled in the later part of 1914 and did not reflect shops that were set up to cater for the wartime growth in military camps. This was certainly the case with the edition for Wiltshire, a county where villages like Codford, Fovant and Shrewton saw new stores set up to cater for soldiers. "Shack shops" sprang up in the middle of Codford, along the Packway at Lark Hill and  near the hamlet of Draycott (to serve Chisledon Camp).

 

Moonraker

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4 minutes ago, Moonraker said:

 

I imagine that the 1915 Kelly's Directory for Dorset was compiled in the later part of 1914 and did not reflect shops that were set up to cater for the wartime growth in military camps. This was certainly the case with the edition for Wiltshire, a county where villages like Codford, Fovant and Shrewton saw new stores set up to cater for soldiers. "Shack shops" sprang up in the middle of Codford, along the Packway at Lark Hill and  near the hamlet of Draycott (to serve Chisledon Camp).

 

Moonraker

 

100% agree.

 

Absence in Kelly's should definitely NOT be taken as proof that Harding wasn't running a shop in Wool.

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He was still on the Liverpool electoral roll 1914-15 on Ancestry

 

Screenshot 2018-08-26 at 15.59.22.png

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I imagine that the roll was compiled before the war broke out and that Harding died in mid-1917 - plenty of time for him to have moved south.

 

There might be scope for a study into civilian mobility during the war, of men and women leaving home to take up job vacancies created by the conflict. Quite a few staff at YMCA huts came from other parts of the country, as did many construction workers.

 

Moonraker

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He doesn't appear to be the officer you found, he is only a corporal in 1917.

 

harding.jpg.60a5a251009a57f2d8f48c67f7d55b16.jpg

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Well found, David. That removes the possible civilian element. Now we need to know more about Harding's service in mid-1916. Very possibly he was unsure where he would be in the coming months, and so gave The Stores as a sort of Poste Restante.

 

Agh! Just realised that the death's was Harding's mother's, not his! Here's the preceding page from the London Gazette.

 

image.png

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No R.F's in the MIC's, could he have been promoted further from corporal ?

Ox and Bucks doesn't sound right.

 

Reginald Harding 2191 Corporal 1915 Oxfordshire And Buckinghamshire...
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If he never left the UK while in the Army, then he wouldn't have an MIC.

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1 hour ago, davidbohl said:

No R.F's in the MIC's, could he have been promoted further from corporal ?

Ox and Bucks doesn't sound right.

 

Reginald Harding 2191 Corporal 1915 Oxfordshire And Buckinghamshire...

9th (Reserve) Battalion, Oxfordshire & Buckinghamshire Light Infantry:
Formed at Portsmouth in October 1914, as a K4 Service battalion.
10 April 1915 : converted into a reserve battalion.
1 September 1916 : became 36th Training Reserve Battalion of 8th Reserve Brigade at Wareham, just six miles from Wool.

 

Moonraker

 

 

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The MIC says Pte.

Electoral roll has him in Dorset from about 1910, so doubtful.

 

 

Screenshot 2018-08-27 at 16.01.32.png

Edited by davidbohl
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Presumably this is the

 

  Charlotte Row,

 

on Weymouth sea front, 13 miles from Wool. I don't know what the "3" indicate? Interesting that all the other electors are military personnel - is the page grab a section of the register devoted to the armed services? There must have been more residents at those addresses - or were they transients?

 

Moonraker

Edited by Moonraker
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36 minutes ago, davidbohl said:

I think this must be him ?

 

 

Screenshot 2018-08-27 at 16.01.32.png

 

90673 HARDING, Reginald, MGC, has a service record surviving, badly badly damaged.

 

Seems to have had time in the ASC Mechanical Transport section as well as Machine Gun Corp, which could point towards a possible tankie, plus he lived in Weymouth (address above), not that far from Wool.

 

Enlisted 09 Dec 1915.  Likely to be a Derby Scheme man.  Called up in Jan 1917.

 

He went out with 23rd Bn., MGC and served in Italy.

 

However he seems to have been a Restaurant Keeper.  No obvious connection to The Wirral nor to teaching.  Also born 1880, which is out for your Reginald Harding, born c.1887

 

Three children born 1905, 1909 and <unreadable>.  His wife was <damaged> Marie Ethel Harding.  Married Bayswater, London, 11 Oct 1904.

 

Doesn't seem to be your man.

 

Mark

 

Edited by MBrockway
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7 minutes ago, Moonraker said:

Presumably this is the

 

  Charlotte Row,

 

on Weymouth sea front, 13 miles from Wool. I don't know what the "3" indicate? Interesting that all the other electors are military personnel - is the page grab a section of the register devoted to the armed services? There must have been more residents at those addresses - or were they transients?

 

Moonraker

 

I assume it's an Absent Voters List, so they will all be military/naval.  The main roll would show the full register of resident electors.

 

His address on the service record is 3, Charlotte Row, Weymouth.

 

Your 36th TR Bn man in Wareham looks a much stronger lead IMHO  :thumbsup:

Edited by MBrockway
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I found the Electoral Roll on Ancestry and did a screenshot scrolled up the page slightly - all is revealed  :P

660537307_DorsetAVL1918.jpg.1c46626bc971bbaf15b1746dcee1b332.jpg

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18 minutes ago, MBrockway said:

Your 36th TR Bn man in Wareham looks a much stronger lead IMHO 

 

Unfortunately he was KiA in July 1916, so not the same man.

harding2.jpg.9a28a9204e2504b0a0a3a6aa039a577b.jpg

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Pretty close !

OTHER LOCAL MEN WOUNDED

News has been received of the death in action on the 19th of July of Corpl. Reginald Frederick Harding. Oxford and Bucks L. I, son of Mr. Charles Harding, of Rock Hill. Chipping Norton, who left with the local Territorials ...

Published: Thursday 03 August 1916 
Newspaper: Banbury Advertiser 

 

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Interesting paragraph in Bovington Garrison http://forcesbovington.2day.uk/siteFiles/files/forcesbovington_HistoryBovingtonGarrison_1377076347.pdf

 

"To return to the situation in early 1917, so many men continued to arrive at Bovington that other infantry camps at Wareham and Swanage had to be taken over and eventually most of the military accommodation on the Isle of Purbeck housed units of the Heavy Section.4 On 28th June 1917 the War Office agreed to change the name from the Heavy Section to the Tank Corps and to expand it from nine to eighteen battalions. This planned expansion was almost immediately suspended, however, because of the pressing needs for more tanks, the suspension was removed towards the end of 1917 and “the personnel for the new units were assemble at the Training Centre at Wool.”

 

Dave

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Dave's link leads to a very interesting WWI history of the army in the locality, with maps. But I would caution against inferring that there was a training centre in Wool village - I think that the reference is to a centre at Bovington Camp. Certainly in Wiltshire there are many instances of a person or unit said to be "at Salisbury" when in fact he/it was at a camp some miles away. Similarly one division is sometimes described as being "at Cholderton", something that is not realised by some local historians because it was at a camp two miles from the village, within the parish but closer to another village.

 

Moonraker

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