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[Guest lynmath]

Hello,

My name is Evelyn and I am really researching the life and times of my great grandfather in India with the 19th Hussars around 1860. However, I have just received a photograph of a group of Seaforth Highlanders one of whom was my uncle, James Kayes. The caption on the photograph is: No 4 Platoon, A Company, 8th Batallion, Seaforth Highlanders, Park House 1915. I believe that Park House was a camp near Shipton Bellinger and that the photograph might have been taken on June 3rd 1915 on the occasion of Highland Games for the 44th Highland Brigrade. The participants included the Black Watch, The Seaforths, The Gordon Highlanders and the Queens Own Cameron Highlanders. I would be grateful if anyone could tell me a little more about this camp and about the Seaforth Highlanders. Although my uncle survived the war he died in 1929 when his own son was too young to have been able to ask of tales of the war. Did this platoon of the 8th Batallion of the Seaforth Highlanders, by some miracle, remain intacte throughout WW1 and where did they serve?

Thank you

Evelyn

[Andrew Hesketh]

Evelyn,

Sorry I can't help you with this request as the Seaforth's are not my area, but Ithought I'd take the opportunity of welcoming you to the forum and wishing you success in your research.

[Derek Robertson]

Evelyn,

Check out:

http://www.1914-1918.net/15div.htm

[Malcolm]

Welcome aboard. See the main site first.

Aye

Malcolm

[Neil Mackenzie]

Evelyn.

Welcome to the Forum.

As you will see from the main site they fought on the Somme but I could find only one specific reference to them in Chris McCarthy's book (The Somme - Day by Day account).

This is for 17 August 1916 when they fought at the Elbow which was about 800 yards north of Pozieres.

Good luck with the search.

Neil

[Terry_Reeves]

Welcome to the Forum Evelyn

8th Seaforths were at Park House Camp from May to July 1915 when they went to France. The camp area is farmers fields today but a view of it can be seen from the ridge that overlooks the village. The poet Ivor Gurney was there with the 2/5th Gloucesters in 1916.

Terry Reeves

[Guest lynmath]

Welcome to the Forum Evelyn

8th Seaforths were at Park House Camp from May to July 1915 when they went to France. The camp area is farmers fields today but a view of it can be seen from the ridge that overlooks the village. The poet Ivor Gurney was there with the 2/5th Gloucesters in 1916.

Terry Reeves

Thank you for your help Terry. I have found some more photographs of Park House on line,

Evelyn

Welcome aboard. See the main site first.

Aye

Malcolm

Thank you Neil

This is very useful information - I shall try to build upon it!

Evelyn

[Steve Bramley]

The poet Ivor Gurney was there with the 2/5th Gloucesters in 1916.

Terry Reeves

Thanks Terry

[27thBN]

Welcome and Good luck in your quest i am sure you will get the answer on the forum .

MC

Erm this post as i just discovered is 5 years old not sure whats going on ??

MC

[JPAE]

Perhaps Steve was researching Ivor Gurney and used the search facility. It is useful, but will resurrect ancient threads if activated for a courtesy.

Phil.

[27thBN]

Phil that would make sense ..I was just surprised by reading the opening thread as it would read like the question was only just asked ,and a few offered offered welcomes it was only after i to had done so i realized the thread was ancient

Thanks MC

[Steve Bramley]

'Perhaps Steve was researching Ivor Gurney and used the search facility. It is useful, but will resurrect ancient threads if activated for a courtesy.

Phil.'

Good point Phil and apologies MC!

Just a bit pleased that Terry had probably saved me some time.

On a plus point, for those interested, it looks like Ivor Gurney's service record is on ancestry, though incomplete.

Steve.

[Moonraker]

For what it's worth, considering Evelyn started this thread five years ago (which I only realised after copying and pasting what follows):

Though Park House (or, sometimes, Parkhouse) Camp was in Hampshire, it was only just inside that county's border and was halfway between Tidworth and Bulford, and so contributed to Wiltshire's military history. It was established as a camp-site in 1900 and was often used by Volunteer battalions.

The 58th Infantry Brigade was based there under canvas shortly after the start of the Great War. One of the first units to arrive was the 8th Cheshires, who detrained at Tidworth and marched to the camp, "having drawn equipment of a sort from the station". A modest meal of bread and tea was purchased from a grocer's cart.

Soon after, huts were built, with the first troops moving into them during the first part of 1915. They numbered some 8,000 and included units which had been under canvas at Perham Down. In June regiments of the 44th Highland Brigade, including the Black Watch, Seaforth Highlanders, Gordon Highlanders and Queen's Own Cameron Highlanders, took part in Highland games at Park House. A barn in Vigors Field was converted into Arnold's Cinema.

When the 2/5th Gloucestershires arrived there in 1916, their first impressions as recorded in the regimental history were not encouraging: "the weather was bitterly cold; there were no palliasses, there were no fires and no light as the electricity failed on the night of the Battalion's arrival. The men were put into huts, given rations and three blankets a piece and left to get what sleep they could on bare bed boards ... despite the discomforts and the tedium of training, Parkhouse Camp had quickly become its home, and though doubtless no one was sorry for a change of venue, yet when the day of departure arrived, there was a feeling of reluctance to leave the Plain and the memories it held in its undulating folds."

Park House became a depot for the Australian Imperial Force, housing training battalions as well as engineers, signallers, the Army Service Corps and Army Medical Corps. Before the end of the war, a machine-gun training depot had been established there. Some Australians arrived in this country with mumps and were treated at the hospital at Park House Camp, where they were impressed with the treatment.

There is nothing to be seen of the original camp. Public rights of way cross the site of the camp and there seems to be some informal public use of other tracks. I sometimes leave my car at Shipton Bellinger and walk across the site up to Beacon Hill, where there are signs of practice trenches, and down past the Kiwi, carved in the hillside by New Zealanders in 1919.

Moonraker