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Ashbury

The memorial in Ashbury, south west Oxfordshire, is a Celtic cross on a plinth with two steps. There are bronze swords on the front and back faces of the cross. The memorial is situated on a green at a junction.

In 2008 War Memorials Trust gave £205 towards the cost of repainting the names on the memorial with black enamel paint.

The memorial was originally unveiled on 10 May 1921 by the Countess of Craven. Her only child, William George Bradley Craven, had fought with the 2nd Battalion of the Hampshire Regiment in France during 1915 - 16, and then in Palestine. He had returned from the war, but had lost one leg and part of one arm, as well as having suffered in gas attacks.

The names inscribed on the memorial are of 20 men who died during World War I, 6 who died during World War II and 1 who died during the Falklands War.

On the front of the plinth is the following inscription

To the
glory of God
and in memory of
those who fell in the Great War
1914 – 1919

The following names from World War I are listed

Lieut. Col. Lawrence C. Palk
Sergt. Sydney Cannons
Cpl. William Walker
L/Cpl William G. Taber
Gnr. Charles F. Lawford
Dvr. Cyril G. Parradine
Dvr. Herbert J. Pearce
Pte. Edward Cross
Pte. Thomas Disbury
Pte. Ernest W. Ebsworth
Pte. Ernest W. Hare
Pte. John Johnson
Pte. John S. Manners
Pte. William C. Nobes
Pte. John Palmer
Pte. Walter J. Pearce
Pte. William Timberell
Pte. Joseph H. Tombs
Pte. William Webb
Pte. Cyril F. White

Hon. Lawrence Charles Walter Palk had fought in the Boer War as well as the First World War in the service of the Hampshire Regiment, the same regiment as the Countess of Craven’s son.

Lieut. Col. Palk was mentioned in despatches, decorated with the award of Legion of Honour and decorated with the award of Companion, Distinguished Service Order (D.S.O.). He died on the first day of the Battle of the Somme.

Lieutenant Corporal Tabor died at the Battle of Passchendaele in October 1917.

Pte. Ebsworth died on the first day of the Battle of Loos in September 1915; Pte. Manners, a fellow member of the Royal Berkshire Regiment, is also commemorated on the Loos Memorial. Other soldiers to die in this battle were Fergus Bowes-Lyon, brother of the Queen Mother, and Rudyard Kipling’s son John, which inspired Kipling’s poem “My Boy Jack”, and subsequent play of the same name and a television adaptation. The battle was described by Robert Graves in his memoir “Goodbye to All That”.

Pte. Nobes in buried in Greece, indicating that he was in a battalion fighting on the Salonika Front. He died at the end of May 1917, a time when the Allies were fighting offensives against the Bulgarians.

Two of the soldiers were killed in the final phase of the war that began with the German Spring offensive, Pte. Tombs in April 1918 and Dvr. Parradine in August.

Further information

War Memorials Trust reference WM2610
UK National Inventory of War Memorials: 31208

Hamstead Marshall website for more information on the Craven family
Salonika Campaign Society website
Information about the Battle of Loos
Information about infantry regiments of Wiltshire and Berkshire

If you have a concern about this memorial please contact the Trust on conservation@warmemorials.org

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