We're in lockdown again, so here is a story of what can happen when you're a part-time medievalist and are in the habit of frequenting small parish churchyards on your daily exercise...

Alongside the medievalism, my work with @CWGC means that I'm always on the look out for their headstones. After taking a look at those in @StPetersArlesey churchyard (itself dating back to the C12th), I hopped onto the online catalogue to see what I could learn.

One detail in particular caught my eye: in Rupert Goodwin's CWGC registration his next of kin are listed as his parents, of 1 Davies Close, and his wife, of 2 Davies Close. I liked the idea of such a close-knit family, so I wanted to investigate further.

Davies Close is a small row of cottages, built using Arlesey bricks, in a small gravel road off of the main high street - it's still there, however the Stag Inn where another (related?) Goodwin household were publicans has long gone.

I mention Arlesey bricks as the local brick works were a major source of employment in the area during the period; in the 1891-1911 censuses, the family can be traced with Rupert, his father George, and an older brother William, all working as labourers in brick and cement works.

In 1915, Rupert marries Millicent May Presland, and in September 1916 they have a daughter named Annie Nellie. Millicent also had a son named Frederick, and both children are named on Rupert's pension card.

Much of the following information is from a column in the @BiggyChronicle from August 1918;

In February 1917 Rupert enlisted in nearby Hitchin, and initially served with the Labour Corps in France before being moved to Italy and the Queen's (Royal West Surrey) Regiment. Here he met another soldier from Arlesey before falling ill and being moved to hospital.

While in hospital he wrote a letter to a friend back home, in which he writes "… as I look round on land and sea it seems so peaceful that I for a time forget there is a war."

The Italian Front, 1918 https://tinyurl.com/yy5qjfs6 

In this letter, he also asks his friend to "remember me kindly to Mr. H. and Mr. W. Wright, and I wish I was working with them again." Mr. H. Wright, representing Arlesey (Beart's) Brick Company, later attended Rupert's funeral.

The brick works, 1958 https://tinyurl.com/y6n6pknt 

On the 9th August 1918 Rupert arrived home on leave, but quickly fell ill on the 11th. Despite attention from doctors, he died on the 21st from complications including pneumonia and pleurisy.

His funeral was a military affair, with his coffin carried by a gun carriage and draped in union flags. A party of the Royal Engineers fired three volleys over his grave, and the Last Post was sounded.

The newspaper article also makes note of the number in attendance at the funeral, indicating how popular Rupert was in his community. With this in mind, I became interested in what happened to his family after his death, and began to research Millicent and Annie.

They both remain in Arlesey, and Millicent later remarries another brick works labourer named Jack Houghton. They have three children together.

At some point, Annie begins working in a factory in Letchworth Garden City. She crops up in another newspaper article from 1936… for cycling without a front headlight! She was fined 5s, after explaining that she had put it on after leaving work - the bulb had simply blown.

Although it's impossible to know which factory Annie worked in, based on being stopped on Icknield Way and theoretically cycling back towards Arlesey… a significant part of me hopes it was one of these gorgeous early C20th buildings that still stand today.

(Early @LetchworthGC industry will definitely come up again in more regional stories - I already have a few more in the pipeline! And I promise not to wax too poetic about the architecture…)

It is the 1939 register that gave me my favourite insight into Annie's life, however. She is listed as working as a domestic servant in a Hawkins household, in Hitchin.

Now, the mention of Hawkins should raise some alarm-bells for almost everyone who went to school in the vicinity of Hitchin - myself included. You see, the head of the household, Mr Bernard W Hawkins, is listed as "Managing Director. Wholesale, Retail, Draper."

There is only one Mr. Hawkins of Hitchin that this can be. And that is the Hawkins of Hitchin that I, and so many others, spent a desperate late-August afternoon in trying on new school uniform surrounded by some seriously frazzled parents.

Danny Loo https://tinyurl.com/y3lcfhxw 

This may be a small, insignificant, connection, but for me this was… not. To go from a small-town parish churchyard and a single headstone for a First World War soldier, and to find that his only daughter, who he left for the front-line when she was only a few months old,

worked in the household of a family whose business played such a fundamental necessity in my own childhood… it really emphasised the connections that we all hold with the recent past and our local communities.

The site of the brickworks where Rupert worked still exist; that field to the bottom and left of the photograph above is still a popular walking route. I walked it several times during the summer lockdown; next time I walk it, I will be able to remember Rupert and his family.