First World War in Headington & Marston
Roll of Honour of St Andrew’s Church, Old Headington

Arthur Charles FRY (1892–1917)

Arthur Charles Fry was born at Tonbridge on 6 November 1892, the eldest son of John Fry (born in Maidstone in 1867, registered third quarter) and Mary Annie Errey (born in Canterbury in 1865/6, registered Blean district first quarter of 1866).

His parents were married in the Canterbury Registration District in the second quarter of 1890 and had three sons:

• Arthur Charles Fry (born in Tonbridge on 6 November 1892)
• Bertram H. Jesse Fry (born in Tonbridge in the third quarter of 1894)
• John Eric Donald Fry (born in Horsemonden in the second quarter of 1900).

In 1891 Arthur’s parents were living at 52 Broad Street Canterbury, where his father John Fry (who was the son of a blacksmith at an iron foundry in Maidstone) was working as a “General smith”. By the time of Arthur’s birth eighteen months later, they had moved to Tonbridge.

By 1900 the family had moved again, this time to Horsemonden, and the 1901 census shows that they lived near the station there. Arthur’s father then described himself as a mechanical engineer.

By the time of the 1911 census Arthur (18) was away at Derby School. He is described in that census as the ward of Wilfrid Ryan Johnson (a Clerk in Holy Orders, then a single man then aged 39), and the two of them were living (without servants) at 31 West Avenue, Derby (which was presumably Johnson’s home). Arthur’s family was now living in Gillingham (at 216 Windmill Road): his father appears to have started a third career (as a ship fitter); his brother Bertram (16) was an apprentice electrical engineer; and his youngest brother John (11) was still at school.

On 14 October 1911 Arthur Fry went up to Hertford College, Oxford. The Undergraduate Register records that he passed Responsions (preliminary examinations for entry) in Trinity Term 1911. He went on to pass examinations in Holy Scripture (then compulsory) in Michaelmas Term 1912 and Greek and Latin in Hilary Term 1913. In Trinity Term 1914 he passed examinations in the following “groups” of the Final Pass School: A1 (two books, either both Greek, or one Greek and one Latin) and C1 (The Elements of Algebra and Geometrical Trigonometry).

About six weeks after the start of the First World War, Fry gave up his studies and attempted to join the army. He first enlisted on 19 September 1914 in the ranks of the 11th Service Battalion of the Royal Fusiliers, but records state that he proved medically unfit.

♥ In the last quarter of 1914 Arthur Charles Fry married Lucy Elizabeth Empson (born in Faringdon, Berkshire in 1876, registered third quarter). Although they married in the Epsom district, they probably met in Oxford, as she and her older sister, both spinsters of private means, were living at 223 Cowley Road at the time of the 1911 census. Fry was 22 and Lucy 38 when they married, and they do not appear to have had any children.

On 8 May 1915 Fry joined the Royal Army Medical Corps Territorials at Oxford and was posted as a Corporal on 11 July 1916. Under the War Decree (1) of 8 February 1916 Fry was exempted from further university examinations. This decree appears in the University Gazette No.1483 Vol. XLVI. It states:

Any member of the University who shall have been absent on Military Service and who at the termination of the period of his Military Service, or after he has been absent on such Service for not less than four Terms, shall either have kept or, … be deemed to have kept, twelve Terms by residence, and who shall be statutably qualified to the Examination in any Final Honour School, shall be permitted to supplicate for the Degree of Bachelor of Arts without passing any further Examinations, provided that he shall have paid the fee of three pounds in addition to the fees payable under the provisions of the Statutes.

Hence the degree of BA was conferred on Arthur Fry at a ceremony in Oxford on 8 July 1916.

Kelly’s Directory for 1916/17 lists “A. C. Fry” as the gardener of Miss Davenport of Davenport House, and possibly he had come to Headington to recuperate: Miss Davenport’s brother: Hugh Davenport, was a Major in his battalion and also an Oxford man. Arthur and Lucy Fry were living in the cottage that is now in the grounds of Headington School beside Headley Way, but was then in a quieter setting next to the Boundary Brook: it was called Bromley Cottage in 1915, and it may have been Fry, with his Kentish roots, who gave it that name; but by the 1920s as it was known as The Boundary Cottage.

In 1916 Arthur Charles Fry was commissioned as a Second Lieutenant in “D” Company of the 2nd/4th Battalion of the Oxfordshire & Buckinghamshire Light Infantry. The following report by Major Geoffrey Keith Rose explains how he died:

At 10 o’clock I heard that Fry, the commander of No. I6 Platoon, had been hit by shrapnel on his way from Company H.Q. to the Sucrerie. To get him to the nearest shelter (C Company H.Q.) was difficult through the mud, and uncomfortable enough with 5.9s coming down close to the trench, but the men, as always, played up splendidly to assist a comrade. Soon afterwards, the doctor, in answer to a telephonic summons, appeared at my H.Q. On our way to reach Fry we were both knocked down in the trench by a 4″, which also wounded Corporal Rockall in the shoulder-blade. I regret that Fry, though safely moved from the trenches the same night, had received a mortal wound. In him died a fine example of the platoon officer. He met his wound in the course of a trivial duty which, had I guessed that he would do it under heavy shelling, I should have forbidden him to undertake. His type of bravery, though it wears no decorations, is distinguished, more than all other, by the unwritten admiration of the Infantry.

Fry died at the age of 24 at No. 5 Casualty Clearing Station in France of wounds received in action at Ablaincourt on 28 February 1917, and is buried at Bray Military Cemetery at Bray-sur-Somme (I.C.16). He was listed as dead in The Times of 7 March 1917.

 

 

Arthur Charles Fry is remembered on:

• The roll of honour of St Andrew’s Church in Old Headington

• The Derby School war memorial

• The memorial in Hertford College Chapel (shown left)

Arthur’s widow

• Mrs Lucy Elizabeth Fry continued to live at The Boundary Cottage after her husband’s death. The whole Davenport estate running along the north side of the Headington Road was sold to Headington School in 1920, but the school evidently allowed Mrs Fry to continue to rent the house, as she was still listed there in Kelly’s Directory for 1947. She did not remarry, and died at the age of 74 in 1950 (registered Oxford district, fourth quarter).

Arthur’s parents

• John Fry died at the age of 63 in 1930/1 (registered in the first quarter of 1931 in the Medway district, which includes Gillingham). The death of a Mary A. Fry was registered in that district in both 1920 and 1940, but neither age quite matches that of Fry’s mother.

Arthur’s brother

• John Eric Donald Fry (born 1900) married Alice R. Turner in the Lambeth registration district in the third quarter of 1920.