Today I attended the ANZAC service at the Cross of Sacrifice at Eastbourne’s Ocklynge Cemetery. There was a short but moving service and a Māori hymn was sung. Wreaths were laid at the foot of the soaring Cross-of Sacrifice, which indicates a cemetery has more than forty war-graves – this cemetery has over a hundred. After…
Category: WW1
The War Memorial that Moved
In the 1950s my great-uncle Reginald Gordon took photographs of a memorial. The negatives were recently developed and I realised they were taken at Birling Gap near East Dean (East Sussex) and show the Robertson War Memorial. The memorial was erected by the National Trust to commemorate the gift of £50,000 by William Alexander Robertson,…
Burial by Proxy?
One of the great losses of the Great War was the enigmatic Field Marshall Lord (Horatio Herbert) Kitchener whose face and pointing finger recruited thousands of men. He was Secretary of State for War and a Cabinet Minister. In 1904 a young man had joined Lord Kitchener’s Staff. He was Oswald Arthur Gerald Fitzgerald from Eastbourne,…
A Good Soldier and Always a Gentleman
John William DANIELS was born in Loughton Essex in 1885, the son of landscape gardener Edwin Daniels from Ruabon, north Wales and Lydia from Shropshire. The family moved to Eastbourne and John was educated at Holy Trinity School. The 1911 Census shows that John with living with his parents and younger sister Annie at 2,…
The Remarkable Adventures of a Sussex Bee-Keeper, Film Maker, Explorer and Rebel
In 1898 a swarm of bees made their home at Exceat Farm, close to Cuckmere Haven on the bend in the road between Seaford and Friston. Some would consider this lucky but sometimes bees can stray inside an old house and become a nuisance. In 1909 it was decided to remove the swarm. The man who was chosen…
Caring for the troops
During the Great War, Seaford became a garrison town and thousands of men trained there before experiencing the horrors of the Front. A tented camp in 1914, soon expanded into two huge hutted camps filled with soldiers from across the country and indeed the world. At 25,000, the population of the camps was many times larger…
A Sussex Prisoner-of-War
Thomas Reginald Charles TOMPKINS was born in West London on 11th August 1898. He was the son of James and Mary Tompkins. His father was a decorator. The family lived at 4, Bayham Road, Ealing and he was baptised at St John’s Church , Northfields on 25thSeptember 1898. During the Great War, Thomas joined the Royal…
My St Georges’ Day Hero
My grandfather Alec Gordon, was a Royal Marine and was seriously injured in the fateful Zeebrugge Raid on St Georges Day, 23rdApril 1918. Alexander Robert Gordon was born in London in 1896, the son of Frederick and Hannah Gordon. In 1910 the Gordon family moved to 1, Romney Road, Eastbourne and his parents worked at…
The King of Eastbourne
In 1912 hundreds of Eastbourne children were treated to a party by William Washington King. A telegram was sent to George V at Balmoral Castle which read “Six hundred happy little children in meeting assembled, send your Majesty loyal greetings!” the answer was received and read out “His Majesty thanks the children assembled at the…
A Hidden Sussex Church
My visit to St John’s Church was short and rather muddy but it is a delightful little building hidden away on the edge of Ashdown Forest between Withyham and Crowborough. It is not a church that you would stumble across by chance and sadly is usually locked due to the theft of some of the…
Quirky Sussex History by Kevin Gordon 