Holy Trinity Parish, Headington Quarry

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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 [Arthur Ernest]
	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 Harry Neville]	A. Wright  [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 (probably 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]

The unveiling ceremony took place in October 1920, when General Fanshawe, with the Bishop of Oxford, read out the names of those who had fallen (photograph on front page of Oxford Journal Illustrated, 27 October 1920).

 

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.)

 

This plaque on the Database of the
Imperial War Museums:
Headington Quarry – WW1
and on War Memorials Online

 

 

 

 

Right: The churchyard cross to which the above plaque refers.

 

This is a Grade II listed structure, and is fully described on a separate page in the Listed Buildings section of this website:

Headington Quarry War Memorial, Holy Trinity churchyard

 

 

 

 

Note: Holy Trinity parish in 1914 covered Headington Quarry itself, and stretched to Risinghurst to the east, Wood Farm to the south, and the present Roosevelt Drive to the west. Part of its boundary lies down the middle of Windmill Road (but the north end of Windmill Road, the west end of St Leonard’s Road, the north end of Gladstone Road, and the whole of Holyoake and Stile Roads are not in this parish).