Stockwell War Memorial

Friends of Stockwell War Memorial & Gardens

SWM

2018 Service of Remembrance at Stockwell

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A service of remembrance will take place at Stockwell War Memorial at 11am on Sunday 11 November 2018.

Rev Erica Wooff of St Michael’s Church will lead the service, which will be followed by a wreath laying ceremony.

The service and wreath laying will take approximately 40 minutes.

There will also be a short service of remembrance at Lambeth Town Hall at 9am. Assembly outside Brixton Library at 8.50am and at 9am process around St Matthew’s Church and into the town hall for a short service and wreath-laying ceremony (approximately 30 minutes).

George Frederick Warwick

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George Frederick Warwick

George Frederick Warwick
Corporal, Service No. 30468, formerly 77895 (Royal Engineers)
Killed in action on 5 October 1917, aged 23
1st Bn., Royal Warwickshire Regiment
Remembered at Tyne Cot Memorial, Zonnebeke, Belgium

A substantial number of men from the Stockwell area were not listed on the Memorial. The Stockwell War Memorial committee invited families to submit names. Some may not have wanted their sons’ names to appear on it; others may have moved away and not been aware that the opportunity existed; others still had resided outside the official boundary of a half-mile radius from the building. It is clear that some families came forward after the unveiling of the monument: a few names were added, out of alphabetical order, on the final panel.

George Frederick Warwick is not listed on Stockwell War Memorial, despite the fact that his family home at 180 Stockwell Road was within half a mile of the memorial site. We do not know the reason for his omission. His name has not been discovered on any of the other local surviving memorials.

After he enlisted in the Royal Engineers in Lambeth in 1915, George served as a Dispatch Rider in various locations around Arras, in the region of Artois, northern France. In March 1917 he was transferred to the 1st Battalion of the Royal Warwickshire Regiment and took part in the Battle of Arras (First and Third Battle of Scarpe), after which his regiment was kept on the front line to consolidate the system of trenches dug on the ground retaken during the battle.

On 30 September George left for Ypres and was killed in action just over two weeks later at the Battle of Broodseinde, at 19 Meter Hill.

While he was serving he fell in love with a young French woman, Georgette Béthencourt, who gave birth to his daughter, Marie, on 26 August 1917. He was able to hold his child in his arms only twice before leaving for Ypres.

George, who was born in the parish of St Martin in the Fields, Westminster in 1896, was the eldest of seven children of George Edward Warwick, a Covent Garden master porter, and Julia Catherine Williams. In the 1911 census the Warwick family was recorded as living at 180 Stockwell Road, with a female servant and a male boarder. When George’s daughter was 11, her George Edward, her grandfather, sent her George’s medals (see letter below).

Information and all photos by kind permission of George’s grandson-in-law Pierre Rouvillois, and Elisabeth Rouvillois.

Stockwell War Memorial: Listed Building status

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Listed Building status

Stockwell War Memorial, illustrated in The Builder, 1920

Designed by Frank T Dear in 1920, unveiled 3rd May 1922 by Princess Alice Countess of Athlone. Neo Grecian style. Tower on plinth 45 feet high of portland stone, and altered towards base.

Front has relief figure of Remembrance, in Greek mourning dress with inscription “To the Stockwell
men who served in the Great War”.

Double doors set in moulded architrave with number ‘1914’ to left and ‘1919’ to right. Each face has moulded cornice and corner pilasters with mutule frieze and anthemion motif at base. Each side has a clock face with cornice on brackets above. 3-sides have rectangular window with leaded lights. A raised Greek key band separates the tower from the plinth. This has 9 panels with the names of the fallen.
Listing NGR: TQ3052576564

Frank T. Dear and Benjamin Clemens

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Stockwell War Memorial, illustrated in The Builder, 1920
Stockwell War Memorial, illustrated in The Builder, 1920

Frank T. Dear
A virtually unknown local architect, Frank T. Dear, won the competition for Stockwell War Memorial. The design was selected by the Royal Academy War Memorials Committee and, according to the report in The Builder (26 March 1920, p 356), was the clear favourite.

The Builder also approved the design, commenting that the architect “has produced a stone tower of excellent proportion and refined detail, depending for its effect on good massing and simple lines. The general character of the design is Neo-Grec, but it is happily free from any of the heavy and aggressive qualities which spoil much of the work executed in this once so popular style.”

The competition brief specified the cost of the structure must not exceed £2,000 exclusive of the cost of the clock. Inevitably, the cost of construction exceeded that figure and the committee responsible for its erection had considerable difficulty raising the necessary subscriptions.

The tower, which is 45 feet high with a clock set on each face, is in Portland stone which a symbolical figure of Remembrance in reilef. As originally laid out the tower stood centrally on the green. The road to the north has been cut subsequently and the main roads on either side have been widened leaving the memorial somewhat marooned. To add to the bleakness, a ventilation/access shaft to the Stockwell Deep Shelter (now occupied by Security Archives Ltd.) was erected alongside. Within the chamber at the base of the tower are the names of the 570 men whose homes were within half a mile of the memorial. The memorial was unveiled by Princess Alice, Countess of Athlone on 3 May 1922.

The memorial stand on the last remaining vestige of the once very large South Lambeth Common.

Text taken from records in the archive at the Imperial War Museum

Benjamin Clemens
Sculptor. Based in London, working in first half of twentieth century. Works include Cain (1904), Immolate (1912), VAD Worker (1920), Stockwell War Memorial (1922) and Madonna and Child (St Stephen’s, Bournemouth). Clemens also sculpted the lions for the Government Pavilion, British Empire Exhibition, Wembley, 1923. He died 27 December 1957.
Sources: Bénézit, 1976; Royal Academy, 1985. [Man2004]

http://www.uea.ac.uk/~t009/ArtistBiography.htm
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Benjamin_Clemens

Samuel Levy

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Samuel Levy (later Ley)
Samuel Levy (later Ley)

A desperate wife tries to get her husband home from France

EIGHT CHILDREN

In 1917, when Samuel Levy was 44, he volunteered to fight Germany for King and country. He left his wife, Pauline (nee Neuberger), and their eight children to cope without him, presumably managing on a proportion of his army pay. His civilian occupation, tailor’s cutter, cannot have brought much in but now they were having to manage on less while Samuel was a private with the Royal West Kent Regiment and later when he was attached to the Royal Engineers and sent to France.

Still, it wasn’t money that worried Pauline. It was the lack of fatherly discipline for her boys.

In October 1917, five months after Samuel signed up, Pauline had had enough. “To the Officer in Commands,” she wrote in a beautiful hand, “…I am making an application to know if it is possible to have my husband transferred from France now on active service there.” Through her little mistakes in English and the way she frames her sentences you can hear the cadences of her Jewish background.

FIVE BOYS

She certainly had her hands full. “I have been left with eight children, five of which are boys, four going to school. They are getting over bearing and need a father’s hand.”

“My husband is 45 years old,” she stated. Her exasperation is audible – what was the man thinking, signing up at his age? “Do you think it possible for him to get some duty nearer home. I may also add that my husband joined voluntary.”

The answer, when it came a little over four weeks later, was blunt and stiffly expressed: “I am directed to inform you,” said the Colonel, “that if your husband is desirous, on account of age, of being posted to a Home Service unit, he must make an application to his Commanding Officer. I am afraid that he can not be brought home to look after his children.”

A SUPERIOR WOMAN

After I read this, I was quite surprised to see in the records that the Army took Pauline’s plea seriously. The Army Pay Office asked an “E. G. Potter” to investigate. Visitors judged Pauline’s home to be “nicely kept” and said the children were “well cared for”. Pauline was not forthcoming enough on why she found the children unmanageable, merely telling her visitors that “with as many boys, her husband ought to have a chance to work in England.” They talked to the headmaster of the boys’ school, who had no complaints and said the boys were not naughty. He had noticed no change in their behaviour when Samuel went to war. However, the general feeling was that Mrs Levy was a “superior woman and one who should have every consideration.”

I cannot tell you what happened next, only that Samuel was demobbed on 3 March 1919 and given a conditional pension. He was described as 60% disabled (neurasthenia, aggravated by the war) and awarded 24 shillings for him, and 24 shillings and 11 pence for his wife and children.

Other details

  • Samuel Levy had two army service numbers: 404122 and 26076. He was enlisted in the Royal West Kent Regiment and was later attached to the Royal Engineers Labour Corp. He was Private.
  • Samuel Levy stood 5 feet 7 inches tall, with a 41inch chest (expandable by 3 and a half inches).
  • Samuel and Pauline married in Dalston Synagogue in 1899.
  • Their children were listed on his enlistment papers as: Lionel, Sarah, Leslie, Aubrey, Gladys, Gerald, Stanley and Mariella (some difficulty deciphering the handwriting). Their years of birth stretched from 1902 to 1913 – eight children in 11 years. Most were born in Highbury or Islington, but Mariella, the youngest, was born in Wandsworth (Clapham was at that time part of Wandsworth).
  • By 1919 the family had moved to 119 Park Lane, Clissold Park
  • Neurasthenia, a common diagnosis in First World War servicemen, is a psycho-pathological term. Symptoms include headache, fatigue, anxiety and depression. It sounds similar to Post Traumatic Stress Disorder.
  • Samuel Levy is not the S. Levy listed on the War Memorial.

Charles John Young

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C. J. Young
Service no. 42404
Private, Essex Regiment, 11th Battalion; formerly 49934, Northamptonshire Regiment
Born in Putney; enlisted in Lambeth; lived in South Lambeth
Killed in action on 21 March 1918, aged 20
CWGC: “Son of John and Elizabeth Young, of 97 Hartington Road, South Lambeth, London.”
Remembered at Beaumetz-les-Cambrai Military Cemetery No. 1, Pas de Calais, France

Information from the 1911 census

Charles John Young, a 12-year-old schoolboy in 1911, lived at 21 Camellia Street, Stockwell. His widowed mother, Elizabeth Young, 44, was born in Germany and made her living charing (cleaning). There were six siblings: Minnie Young, 18, who worked stripping tobacco; Rose Young, 16, a collar machinist; Lena Young, 14, a darning machinist; Walter Mafeking Young, 10; May Lily Elizabeth Young, 6; Grace Margarete Young, 5. The family of eight lived in two rooms. Three other of Elizabeth’s babies had died.