World War One - Memorials in Sutton-under-Brailes
Church of St Thomas à Becket
Details from the Stourton Chapel war memorial showing the date of its re-dedication and soldiers listed.
The chapel memorial, opposite the south door of the Parish Church.
Notes on the above WW1 soldiers.
All the soldiers who lost their lives are recorded on the Cherington and Stourton memorial.
For details see the Cherington and Stourton page, here.
Most of the survivors appear on the memorial panels in the Parish Church at Cherington. They are Frank, George and David Bailey; Harold Bartlett; Charles and Percy Godson; Albert Taylor; Walter Walker and Albert Woolams. Albert appears more correctly on the Cherington church memorial, as Woolliams - a surname almost certainly pronounced as it is written on the chapel scroll. The memorial states that George and David Bailey and Albert Woolliams had received wounds, while Walter Walker had been "wounded twice".
This leaves Harry Compton, Ernest Harris, Hargreaves Sutton and William James Sutton, all identifiable with reasonable certainty from the 1901 and 1911 censuses for Sutton-under-Brailes. Harry is probably the Henery James Compton who in 1911 appears, aged 14, as the ploughboy son of carpenter John Compton and his wife Catherine. Ernest Harris was probably the son, a 21-year-old gardener in 1911, of John, a farm labourer, and Harriet. Hargeaves and William James were almost certainly brothers: Hargreaves, aged 4 in 1901, had an elder brother William, aged 7 at the time of the census; their mother was Minnie, and their father Frederick, a farm carter. From the memorial in Sutton church we learn that Ernest and Hargreaves had both been wounded.
Memorial to the fallen
Eleven young men from Sutton went off to the war; nine came back. In Cherington and Stourton, over one in four gave their lives; the death toll here is therefore almost as heavy. A stone memorial was erected on the village green to the two soldiers who died for their country.
Portrait from the Evesham Journal and
Four Shires Advertiser, May 27th 1916.
Details in italics are from the Commonwealth War Graves Commission website; other information is from censuses and from the General Registry Office indexes of birth and marriage records, provided that the relevant entries are, through a combination of name, registration place, and date, unambiguous - or at least probable (indicated by ?).
Son of Samuel Charles Carey & Elizabeth (née Hancock) of Sutton. Lance Corporal 12897 9th Bn., Warwickshire Regt. Died Wed. 5 April aged 25; burial place unknown. Commemorated on Panel 9 of the Basra Memorial, Iraq. Until 1997 the Basra Memorial was located on the main quay of the naval dockyard about 8 kilometres north of Basra. Because of the sensitivity of the location, it was moved by presidential decree and re-erected some twenty miles away. The memorial commemorates soldiers of Commonwealth forces who died in operations in Mesopotamia, over 40,000 being named on it.
Son of Thomas & Ann (née Nason) of Sutton. Husband of Amelia Harris (née Pratt?) of Sutton. Gunner 110127 227th Siege Battery, Royal Garrison Artillery. Died Mon. 2 Jul, aged 35, bur. Strand Military Cemetery, Flanders, Belgium (Comines-Warneton, Hainaut; 8 miles from Ieper (Ypres). 'Charing Cross' was the name given by the troops to a point at the end of a trench called the Strand, which led into Ploegsteert Wood; it was used for burials especially Apr to Jul 1917.
Memorial in the Parish Church of St Thomas à Becket to Sutton men who served.
Four of the five Harris men commemorated (all except Ernest) were brothers.
For details of memorials in neighbouring Cherington and Stourton, click here
The parish of Sutton-under-Brailes, with a population of less than 100, is separated from the centre of Stourton by just a couple of fields. After the Wesleyan Methodist chapel at Stourton was closed (it was later converted into a private dwelling), the memorial to members of its congregation was taken to the Parish Church of St Thomas à Becket at Sutton. This relocation in 1986 may seem a little surprising in view of the fact that only four of the nineteen men on the chapel memorial were from Sutton families.
