First World War in Headington & Marston

Holy Trinity Parish, Headington Quarry

Please follow the pointer above if you would like to see a biography of all the men on the memorial

The ecclesiastical parish of Headington Quarry had a total population of 2,362 at the time of the 1911 census, and it lost 45 young men in the First World War. The names below are listed on a stone tablet in the church porch: they are in the order in which they appear, which is not strictly alphabetical.

THE CHURCHYARD CROSS WAS SET UP TO THE MEMORY OF THE MEN OF THIS PARISH WHO LAID DOWN THEIR LIVES IN THE GREAT WAR 1914–1918
	B. W. Brazier  [Benjamin William]	C. J. Gurl  [Cyril James]1	H. Perrin  [Henry Joel]
	E. J. Butler  [Ernest James]	E. Gurl  [Edward]	G. Prichard  [George Thomas]
	J. Clark  [hard to identify]	H. Hedges  [Harry]	G. Skey  [George Leslie]
	T. Cooper  [Thomas Henry]	W. G. Herbert  [Walter George]	H. Smith  [Harry]3
	W. F. Cooper  [William Francis]	J. Heritage  [Joseph]	W. Smith  [William]3
	E. Coombes  [Emanuel Richard]	A. Horwood  [Aubrey Victor Bertie]	P. Surman  [Percival James]
	E. C. Coppock  [Edward Charles]	B. F. G. Jeffs  [Bertie Frederick George]2	A. Taylor  [Arthur Thomas or “Ferret”]
	R. Coppock  [Richard]	J. A. Kislingbury  [Albert Joseph]	A. E. Taylor  [hard to identify]
	G. Cox  [hard to identify]	A. Kimber  [Anthony]	H. J. Trafford  [Henry James]4
	W. A. Cox  [William Arthur]	R. J. Kimber  [Richard John]	W. I. Trafford  [William Isaac]4
	P. D. Doyne  [Philip Denys]	T. G. Kimber  [Thomas George]2	G. Trafford [George]
	J. Drewitt  [John]	A. Marshall  [Alec Stuart]	J. Tolley  [John]
	R. C. Evelegh  [Rosslyn Curzon]	R. Morris  [(George) Richard]	W. Webb  [William Richard]
	E. C. Edwards  [Edwin Charles]	R. H. N. Prior  [Reginald Harold Neville]	A. Wright  [Henry Arthur or “Dusty”]
	A. Gurl  [Aubrey]1	F. C. Parsons  [Frederick Charles]	C. Ward  [Charles Frederick]
Notes Aubrey Gurl and Cyril James Gurl were brothers. St Andrew’s Church also claims Bertie Jeffs and Tom Kimber as its own. Harry Smith and William Smith were brothers Henry James Trafford and William Isaac Trafford were brothers. The following two men who died in the First World War are buried in Holy Trinity churchyard with war headstones, but since they are not Quarry men and do not appear on the memorial, they are not dealt with here: James Grace of Great Milton (17329)  [CWGC]. He died of pneumonia at the age of 35 in the Third Southern General Hospital in Oxford (normally the Examination Schools) and was given a funeral with full military honours at Holy Trinity Church on the same day as Charles Ward. Sandford Alexander Lewis of Cowley Barracks (26229) [CWGC]

 

Left: Holy Trinity Church in Quarry lists its First World War dead on a tablet in the church porch which is visible through the gated entrance even when the church is closed

 

 

”Terrific amount of men went out
of this village and… a terrific lot
didn’t come back” (J. Kerry)

 

 

Many Quarry men enlisted in the ill-fated 2nd Battalion of the Oxfordshire & Buckinghamshire Light Infantry: of its thousand men, only 29 survived the war. (This battalion was often referred to as “the 52nd” because as it had been the 52nd Regiment since the mid-eighteenth century.)

 

Above left: The war memorial in Holy Trinity Churchyard in 2009; above right: when it was new in the 1920s

“A War Memorial, designed by Mr. Howard of Oxford, carved by Mr. Alec Millar of Chipping Camden, and masoned and erected by Messrs. E. and F. Coppock and Goodgame (of the village), commemorates their sacrifice and deepens our ‘peace resolutions’ when we keep ‘the Silence’ each year at its base.” (Coppock & Hill, 1933)

The unveiling of the war memorial in Holy Trinity Churchyard is shown as a full front-page photograph in the Oxford Journal Illustrated of 27 October 1920.