St John the Baptist War Remembrance Plaques

The remembrance plaques are sitauted near the altar at St John the Baptist church.  They list the 58 men in the parish who lost their lives during World War I and the 14 in World War II.  To the Glory of GOD and in memory of the men of this parish who gave their lives in the War 1914-19

Claude ALEXANDER, Horace J ALEXANDER, Harry ASPDEN, J Thomas BAKER, Charles BARSBY, W Henry BEAMAN, Percy C BECK, Harold S BELLAMY, J Harry BIRD, Edmund G BLAND, Frank BROWN, Tom CHAMBERS, Reginald E CHAMBERS, William G CHAMBERS, David A BALDWIN, Harold CHAPMAN, Joseph CLARKE, Sydney CLARKE, Thomas A CLARKE, H Harry COLE, Arthur EAGLE, Arthur O ELLSON, Frederick FREARSON, J Oliver GAMBLE, H William HIND*, Henry D KNIGHT, Walter E LADKIN, Herbert LAWRENCE, Ernest LEWIS, George V H LINES, Frderick J LUCK, Walter MYATT, Walter H NEALE, Horace V POSTLETHWAITE, Clement A RILETT, A Andrew ROSS, G Walter ROSS, Frank RUSH, Guy E F RUSSELL, Everard R SHAKESPEAR, B Noel SHARP, George M SHERWIN, Robert SIMONS, George SIMPKIN, Samuel SMALLEY, Harold C SMITH, George B STAPLEFORD, Alfred E SWANN, Frank N TARR, Frederick W TAYLOR, William J TILBURY, Walter J TUFFLEY, Alfred WARBURTON, George WESLEY, Arthur WHATLEY, Harry E WILLSON, Albert G YORKE, Frederick W ZANKER

* Horace William, son of William Tom Hind

This tablet was placed here by the congregation of this church to commemorate with affection and gratitude those of this parish who gave their lives in the war of 1939-1945

Gordon BODYCOTE, Cyril Denys BOOTHRIGHT, John Ambrose BUTCHER, Dennis CRAMP, Frank CUER, Anthony Kyle DAWSON, Arthur Kenneth HALL, Frederick Walter KNOTT, Clifford Herbert LILBURN, Gordon MARSH, William Arthur NEWTON, Peter SALMON, Charles Peter Keith SMITH, Kenneth Frank WHITE

These men gave their lives for us and I, for one, am grateful.  Regards, Elizabeth.

The war memorials in their setting, next to the high altar

Remembering the Clarendon Park fallen

Lest We Forget

Private Harry Allen, 9th Battalion Leicestershire Regiment (1897-1916)

Harry Allen was born in 1897 in Leicester, the son of Charles Samuel Allen and Kate nee Thacker.  His mother died in 1904, when Harry was just 7, and his father remarried a much younger woman, Edith Lount.  They continued to live at 237 Avenue Road Extension until sometime between 1911 and 1914, when the family moved to 86 Lorne Road.  He had three brothers, John Rose, Walter Edmund and Samuel Purver, and two sisters, Gertrude Emma and Beatrice Violet.  Of these only his sisters survived to see the end of World War I.

In 1911, aged 14, Harry worked as a wool washer in the hosiery trade.  Aged 18, fully grown at 5 ft 4 and 3/4, Harry weighed just 8 stones and 1lb.  He had a fresh complexion, grey eyes and light brown hair. 

At the beginning of the war he lived 86 Lorne Road with the rest of his family.  His brother Samuel had died earlier that year aged 19.  He enlisted early on, on 8th September 1914, joining the Leicestershire Regiment.  His battalion, the 9th (service), was formed in Leicester in 1914.  Harry was sent with the rest of his comrades, first to Bourley Camp, Aldershot and then to Pernham Down on Salisbury Plain for final training.  In 1915 he embarked for France, landing on 29th July.  He served on the Western Front, where 517 men from his battalion died. 

Harry was wounded on 8th October 1916 - a “severe” shrapnel wound in his back (right scapula), chest and arm.  He was admitted to the field hospital, then transferred to a hospital in Rouen, then on 4th November to the The King George Hospital, in Stamford Street, Waterloo, an emergency facility created in what is now part of King’s College London.  Between 1915 and 1919 over 70,000 soldiers were treated there.  Harry was operated on and found to be in a very serious state internally.  He died on 7th November 1916, of shock and loss of blood. He is buried at Welford Road Cemetery, Leicester, where there is a memorial plaque. 

Harry’s medals, the Star, Victory and British, were sent to his father Charles.  None of Harry’s personal effects survived to send with them.

I will be posting details of the remembrance plaque at St John the Baptist Church on Remembrance Sunday.  Regards, Elizabeth.

Chinese crackers on Howard Road

I meant to post this bonfire night-themed newspaper article from 1900 yesterday, but I was in bed with tonsilitis (woe is me, etc), so here it is a day late instead.  Following on from those Mischievous Lads, here is another example of delinquent Clarendon Park youth, from the Leicester Chronicle Saturday, October 13th, 1900 p6.

THE RISING GENERATION

Leonard Stanton (12), schoolboy, St. Leonard’s Road, and Herbert Wales (15), shoehand, Clarendon Park Road, were summoned for letting off Chinese crackers in Howard-road, on September 26th.  They were fined 2s. 6d.

Leonard Stanton lived at 103 St Leonards Road – and I bet he got a fair amount of stick for it!  Funnily enough I know the people who live there now and they are the nicest, least delinquent folk imaginable.  Leonard’s father was already dead in 1900 and his mother had four children to take care of.  Between October 1900 and April 1901, he left school and started work as a grocer’s errand boy.  By 1911 he was a grocers assistant, working for and living with Frank Claxton in Newark, Nottinghamshire.  I hope that by then he had grown out of his firecracker habit!  Unfortunately I haven’t been able to find anything out about his partner in crime, Herbert Wales.  Let’s hope he didn’t blow himself up!   Regards, Elizabeth.

St John the Baptist Church

Central section of St John's

St John the Baptist Church, on Clarendon Park Road, is the parish church of Clarendon Park.  It is an Anglican Church (Church of England).  There is far too much to say about its history in just one post, but I would like to share with you a few pictures and facts about its earliest days.

St John’s was built in 1884-1885 by architects Goddard and Paget of Leicester, funded largely by a gift of £6,000 from Miss Sarah Barlow (more about her some other time).  It was built as a chapel of ease in the parish of St Mary Magdalene, Knighton, and only became parish church in its own right in 1917.  The parish minute books show how pleased the then vicar and churchwardens were, as it considerably simplified the financial running of the churches.

Joseph Goddard also built Leicester’s clock tower, in 1868.  Here is an excellent site about the Goddard empire.  St John’s was designed in the Victorian gothic style.  I think it is fair to say that it is considerably more imposing on the inside than the outside.  The level of detail is astonishing and the overall impression is of grandeur and awe.  Here is one of Goddard’s original designs for the railings that used to top the front boundary wall (which you can see in the photo above have been removed…probably as part of the war effort).  Luckily the attractive gate still stands.  Leicestershire Records Office holds all the original designs, and they are beautiful in themselves.

As for the interior, here is a postcard showing the interior as it was before the addition of a new reredos in memory of Guy Edward Frank Russell, who died in World War I.  The screen is still in place – this was taken down within living memory of the current congregation. 

St John’s is open 9 – 3pm most days except weekends (services on Sunday are at 8.30am, 9.30am and 11am) and it is well worth a visit even if you are not a practising Christian.  There is a lot more to say about St John’s but some other time!  In the meantime, check the Index page of this site for several more articles about St John’s.  Regards, Elizabeth.

Robbery at Clarendon Park Post Office

The Leicester Chronicle Saturday, July 21st 1888, p2

ROBBERY AT A POST OFFICE

Some time during Friday evening the Post Office at Clarendon Park was broken into and a sum approaching £20 taken from the till.  The matter is in the hands of the police.

The Chronicle doesn’t report whether the thief was caught in the weeks after the robbery, but I did find out a few interesting things.  The post office in 1888 was on Queens Road.  It was run by Henry Scorror, “stationer and agent” (Wright’s 1888 Directory of Leicestershire) and his wife Catherine.  Letters and parcels were collected on weekdays at 9.50am, 2.10pm, 3.30pm, 7pm and 8.20pm.  By 1891, as the population of Clarendon Park increased, collections were also made on Sundays.  The address was now 83 Queens Road – where the current post office also stands.  It’s amazing how much longevity of service these Clarendon Park shops and businesses have seen!

In 1891 Henry Scorror lived at 39 Montague Road in 1891 with wife Catherine Burnet née Bethell, his children and servant.  He died in Queens Road on 1st January 1893 aged just 39.

Catherine kept up the post office at 83 Queens Road, with the assistance of daughters Annie Burnet Scorror and Edith Dorothy Bethell Scorror, living in rooms above the shop.  She was still sub-postmistress in 1916, but retired some time before 1925, when daughter Annie was in post (now as Mrs O’Connor).   Catherine died 9th January 1936.

I’ll be visiting Leicestershire Records Office on Thursday to find out how long the Scorror/O’Connor family were in charge of Clarendon Park Post Office.  The British Postal Archive will also be a port of call one of these days.  And I must speak to the lovely chaps who run the post office today to see if they can tell me anything about its history.  As always, half an hour of research brings up many more questions than answers!  regards, Elizabeth.

W T Hind – prescriptions books

I made it to Leicestershire Records Office and had a look at the prescriptions books of W T Hind, chemist and druggist on Queens Road for over 100 years.  I wrote an article about W T Hind here.  The office holds the prescription books from between 1894 (so not long after Mr Hind opened for business in 1888) and 1954.  They are beautiful, card and leather-bound ledgers in a variety of styles.  I looked mostly at the volumes covering 1894-1920.  The handwriting was difficult to decipher and the prescriptions were in note form, using archaic terms for obsolete medicines, so it was quite a task to make sense of them. 

The prescriptions were interesting from two points of view: Firstly, the prescriptions themselves; and secondly the people for whom the prescriptions were intended. These varied from those not important enough to be named – many servants like “The Maid (Rev Forsyth)” who needed an expectorant “when the cough gives trouble.”  She was prescribed Terebene on a piece of sugar.  Also “Baby Baker” (who needed lanolin), “Mrs Rattenbury’s baby” (who turned out to be Grace, daughter of the Wesleyan minister John Ernest Rattenbury, one of the outstanding preachers of his day, then living in North Avenue.  He founded the Belgrave Hall mission and built Clarendon Park Church) and countless others.  Mr Hind seems to have dispensed to quite a clerical crowd as there were lots of Reverend gentlemen amongst his clientele, eg Rev Holmes (could have been the vicar of St Peter’s or the curate of St Nicholas…anyway, he was a bit bunged up and needed oil of eucalyptus in a tumbler of steamy water) and Rev Forsyth (the renowned theologian and first minister of Clarendon Park Congregational Church).

But the prescriptions are fascinating.  W T Hind dispensed the medicine of his day and until well into the 20th century much of it was rough and ready, some of it being quackery and much of it being downright dangerous.  Take Mr T Pochin’s prescription:  Chloroform, strychnine and digitalis three times a day.  It must have been a heart medicine, but it didn’t save the poor chap as he died the same year, aged 58.  Mr Alfred Edwin Dexter – a commercial clerk living at 51 Howard Road – was prescribed magnesium carbonate, magnesium sulphate, chloroform and aqua…I’d love to know what that was for. 

Mr Hind also made up his own “branded” medicines, which all pharmacists offered in the days when medicines were not heavily regulated and when druggists literally made up pills and powders by mixing ingredients.  In 1897 Mr Hind offered “The Sulphonal Powders” (a sleeping medicine) and there were several others mentioned.  I like this:  Hind’s Nursery Hair Lotion.

I couldn’t help buying the label above on ebay last week…Mr W T Hind has really caught my imagination.  I am delighted to report that his great-granddaughter – herself a pharmacist – is willing to let me interview her about The Park pharmacy, and I will be sharing the results as soon as possible.  Regards, Elizabeth.

Clarendon Park 1909 businesses directory

Ok so the title of this article was a bit naughty.  There was no directory of Clarendon Park businesses in 1909 (Nowadays we have The Clarendon Directory, delivered free to our doors).  But there was a selection of directories available for Leicester folk to find their shops, businesses, gentry and postal delivery times, and I thought it would be interesting to list the businesses listed under Clarendon Park addresses.  Actually this is part of a much larger project I am working on, to record all the businesses and in particular the shops of Clarendon Park from its earlier days to the present.  I love the fact that there are and were so many shops here, and there is still a lot of evidence remaining of the shops that have long since been turned into private dwellings.

So here is an edited list of the shops and business of Clarendon Park in the 1909 edition of Wright’s Directory of Leicestershire:

• Aerated water manufacturers – 2
• Agents (house, land and estate) – 1
• Bakers – 4
• Boot and shoe makers – 11
• Builders, bricklayers, joiners and contractors – 18
• Butchers – 7
• Carters (general) – 3
• Chemists and druggists – 1
• Chimney sweepers – 1
• China, glass and homeware dealers – 1
• Clock cleaners, makers and repairers – 2
• Clothes and wardrobe dealers – 1
• Coal agents,  dealers and merchants - 8
• Confectioners and pastry cooks – 2
• Confectioners and sweet dealers – 6
• Cowkeepers and dairymen – 3
• Cycle repairers, dealers and makers – 2
• Drapers and haberdashers – 9
• Dress makers – 14
• Fishmongers and poulterers – 4
• Florists and seed dealers – 1
• General and hardware dealers – 3
• Greengrocers and fruiterers – 6
• Grocers and general provision merchants – 5
• Hairdressers – 4
• Horse and trap proprietors – 2
• Ironmongers – 2
• Launderers – 5
• Market gardeners – 3
• Milk dealers – 3
• Milliners – 2
• Newsagents – 1
• Plumbers, glaziers and fitters – 4
• Shopkeepers (not otherwise listed) – 21
• Tailors – 5
• Wine and spirit merchants – 2

I love the fact that Clarendon Park had not just one, but two aerated water manufacturers (one of which was our friend William Tom Hind).  Also that there were so many butchers, bakers, greengrocers and fishmongers.  All of which still exist in Clarendon Park today, but not in anything like the numbers.  We could blame Sainsbury’s (or Jacksons, as it was until a few years ago), but there has always been a Co-op in Clarendon Park Road and I would guess that people’s changing cooking and eating habits are just as much to blame.  I am just grateful there are still useful shops to be found.  Regards, Elizabeth.