As part of Alstonefield annual Remembrance Sunday service the community recalls the names of the 16 men, from or associated to the village, who gave their lives in the two World Wars and are recorded on the War Memorial in the churchyard or on separate headstones. Research has been undertaken to learn more about them, their family life, military…
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Private 16717. North Staffordshire Regiment. (7th Battalion) Thomas Salt was born around 1884 in the Cheadle area and was the son of John and Agnes Salt (Nee Willett) In 1891 the family are living at Sweet Hill Farm, Boundary, near Cheadle, with John Salt senior, and sisters Mary Ann 9 and Ellen 11. John Salt’s…
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During the Great War the opening times of public places serving alcohol were heavily restricted. In 1915 Ernest Johnson was charged with keeping the Rising Sun open after 9pm on a Sunday, where customers were drinking cider. It appears that since cider had been sold by a Mineral Water company, some licensees were unsure whether…
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The Military Hospital was built in 1916 to serve both Brocton and Rugeley army training camps. The hospital had twelve wards with a total of one thousand beds and served the camps for the remainder of the war, as well as housing convalescing soldiers from France. It continued to be used until the late 1920s.…
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Article by Richard Pursehouse and Lee Dent [Source : This article was first published in The New Zealand Communication Trench, October 2015, the newsletter of the New Zealand Branch of the Western Front Association.] In January 2015, Lee and Richard went to Belgium to continue their research on the Messines terrain model they had re-discovered…
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In April 1918 a potentially lethal accident during a bombing lesson on Cannock Chase was narrowly averted by the quick thinking of 23927 Lieutenant Randolph Gordon Ridling, the Bombing Officer in charge of a group of New Zealand Riflemen. Read the entire article by Richard Pursehouse and Lee Dent The Grenade Accident on Cannock Chase…
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The following diary entries are taken from the Pocket Diary of Sir Clifford F. Gothard, Bearwood House, Winshill, Burton-on-Trent [DocRef D4090/1-6, Stafford Records Office], covering his Military Service during the Great War, 1916 to 1920. The diaries and the miniature texts they contain have been painstakingly transcribed by Staffordshire Records Office volunteer, Ray Wilson, and…
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A newly discovered document has shed light on J.R.R Tolkien in Staffordshire – The Council of Lichfield 1915 On September 25th 1915 The George Hotel in Lichfield saw the final meeting of the T.C.B.S. – ‘The Council of Lichfield.’ T.C.B.S. is an acronym for Tea Club, Barrovian Society. Tolkien and his friends at King Edward’s…
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Should the police have been used during the First World War to investigate people’s backgrounds and see if they were doing what they said they were doing when it came to being called up by the military? That’s one of the surprising issues which has come out of examining administrative papers held in the Staffordshire…
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Where on Cannock Chase is Harley’s Corner? Harley’s Corner is at the junction where Penkridge Bank Road meets the Stafford Brook Road. Here a Mr Ernie and Mrs Annie Harley used to live in the cottage Hoar Cross View which is close to this junction. When the Wheeldon’s Green Bus came to this junction the…
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