Basingstoke

[Moonraker]

Basingstoke seldom seems to have featured in our pages, but today I visited the Holy Ghost Cemetery in the town, close to the railway station, where I came across the grave of airman Captain John Aidan Liddell VC MC, larger than most others and with several wreaths placed against it, one in RAF colours.

 

See also here.

 

Nearby are the graves of a Belgian soldier and several Canadians. A couple of miles away was Number 4 Canadian Hospital. (I was particularly pleased to see the photo of the railway line that served the hospital.) The locality where it was built is known as Park Prewett, and this was the name of the psychiatric hospital there from 1921 to 1997.

 

Which brings me to one of the earliest puzzles that I failed to solve in my research into Wiltshire and the Great War. I have two postcards showing the funeral of Pte Charles Smith 2592, 1/4th Hampshire Regiment, whose parents lived at 4 Farm Cottage, Park Prewett. He died on September 15, 1914 and was buried at Shrewton (St Mary) Churchyard, on the edge of Salisbury Plain. Usually I would hope to find details in the local newspapers covering the locality where the death occurred or the soldier's home area, but I could find nothing; obviously there was a great deal of war news to cover at that time.

 

(The usual sources, including LLT, differ about the whereabouts of new Hampshire Territorial battalions, I have the 1/4th at Bulford, eight miles from Shrewton at the time of Smith's death, though the 2/4th, 1/5th, 2/5th and 1/7th were at Bustard, just two miles away.)

 

Just across the road from the Holy Ghost Cemetery stands the empty Great Western Railway "hotel". I had digs there for several months in 1970, when it was run by two elderly ladies. Since then, and without my sobering influence, it had become a major trouble spot.

 

(Basingstoke, of course, is Thomas Hardy's Stoke Barehills. Now the countryside for seemingly miles around is covered in housing and industrial units, leading our very own Steven Broomfield to label it "Basingrad".)

 

Moonraker

[Steven Broomfield]

G Company of the 4th Hampshires (HQ, Winchester) was based in Basingrad 

[charlie962]

1 hour ago, Moonraker said:

Usually I would hope to find details in the local newspapers covering the locality where the death occurred

Soldiers Effects says Bustard Camp, Salisbury Plain and also tells us he was born Longparish, Whitchurch, enlisted 10/8/14 and was a labourer at the time. Father George. (edit Lives of the FWW says Geoffrey ??)

 

SDGW says residence Andover and Enlisted Winchester (suprise!)

 

Charlie

Edited 25 August , 2019 by charlie962

[Moonraker]

Thanks, Charlie. The fact that he lived in Andover explains why I could find no reference to his death in the Basingstoke Gazette, though local newspapers did carry stories about parents losing their sons.

 

It would have made sense for the 1/4th to be in the same camp as other battalions of the Hampshire Regiment. I did wonder if all those years ago when compiling a list of where units were based in Wiltshire I had misread "Bustard" as "Bulford", but Forces War Records says Bulford. (Could be that the compiler had misread?)

 

Moonraker

[Steven Broomfield]

For what it's worth, D Coy of the 4th Hampshires came from Andover (with Drill Stations at Tidworth, Highclere, Burghclere, Kingsclere, Woodhay, Whitchurch and Cholderton). As my old dad came from Ashmansworth, near Kingsclere, I suppose that would have been his local unit.

[Moonraker]

His nearest drill hill would have been at Highclere, about three miles away, with a long hill on the way.  (Highclere, of course, is where "Downton Abbey" was filmed.) A bit of a plod, especially in uniform and after a long day's work.

 

To return to burnishing Basingstoke's image, Thornycroft supplied nearly 5,000 vehicles for the war effort. (Googling will lead to more WWI info and images.) The local "Milestones" museum has a Thornycroft collection, which included an army lorry when I visited it c2003.

 

And the track of the bucolic Basingstoke-Alton light railway was taken up in 1917 to be used for the war in France. (The line was re-laid and re-opened in 1924.)

 

 

Moonraker