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

Harry Olivier Sumner GIBSON (1885–1917)

From Lancing College roll of honour

Harry Olivier Sumner Gibson was born at the Rookery in Old Headington on 13 May 1885, the son of Walter Sumner Gibson (born in Fawley, Hampshire in early 1849, the son of William Gibson) and Julia Elizabeth Olivier (born in Wallingford in early 1852, but in 1881 living in Poulshot, Wiltshire, where her father Henry Arnold Olivier was Rector).

At the time of the 1881 census Harry’s father Walter Sumner Gibson was a single man aged 32 living alone with two servants in Godalming and working as a schoolmaster; but in 1883 he bought The Rookery in Old Headington (now Ruskin Hall) from the Revd J. W. A. Taylor, and took over the boys’ school that was based there.

The marriage of Harry’s parents in Hampshire on 2 January 1884 was announced thus in Jackson’s Oxford Journal two days later:

Jan 2, at All Saints’ Church, Crondall, Hants, Walter Sumner Gibson, of Headington, near Oxford, fifth son of the late Rev. W. Gibson, Rector of Fawley, Southampton, to Julia Elizabeth, eldest daughter of the Rev. Henry A. Olivier, formerly Rector of Poulshot, Devizes.

Harry attended Hartford House School in Winchfield, Hampshire and then Winchester School from 1897 to 1904, where he was School Prefect, won the Natural Science Prize, and was in the College XV.

In 1897 Harry’s father sold The Rookery, and by the time of the 1901 census he was a schoolmaster in London, living with his family (plus five boarders and four servants) at 197 Bedford Hill, Streatham. Harry himself was boarding at Winchester School on census night

In 1904 Harry won a scholarship to New College, Oxford and obtained his B.A. (2nd Class) in Natural Science in 1908. During 1908 he carried out biological research studies in Naples.

Harry then became a Science master at Lancing College in Steyning, Sussex from 1909 to 1913, and can be seen living at the college at the time of the 1911 census, when he was 25. His father was then working as a private tutor in Tooting.

An announcement in The Times of 16 June 1913 announced that Harry Olivier Sumner Gibson had been appointed by the Board of Agriculture as “an Assistant Inspector (Non-Established) for fishery business, and generally for the purposes of the Fisheries Acts administered by the Board”.

♥ On 4 June 1914 Harry Olivier Sumner Gibson married Hester Worth Townsend, the daughter of the Revd John H. Townsend of Oatlands Park, Surrey. They had two children:

• John Sumner Townsend Gibson (registered third quarter of 1915 at Samford, Suffolk)
• Helen Olivier Costeker Gibson (registered second quarter of 1917 at Westhampnett, Sussex).

Meanwhile Harry’s father was appointed an academic reader at Oxford University Press in 1914, and moved with his wife to 9 Lathbury Road in north Oxford.

Harry Gibson enlisted on 31 August 1914 and served as a Lieutenant in the 11th Battalion of the London Regiment (Finsbury Rifles). He went to Gallipoli in September 1915 and in Egypt and served in Egypt and on the Suez Canal from 1915 to 1917. He was killed in action near Wadi Gaza at the Second Battle of Gaza in Palestine at the age of 31 on 19 April 1917 when advanced with his platoon through “an exceedingly heavy barrage and crossfire from machine guns”. He is buried at the Gaza War Cemetery (XIV.F.8).

Gibson is listed on the war memorial outside St Margaret’s Church in north Oxford and on the roll of honour of St Andrew’s Church in Old Headington. He is also on the memorial in New College Chapel (below):

Administration was granted in London to his widow, Hester Worth Gibson, on 7 June 1918. He left £2,012, and his last address is given as Winton, St Albans.

His obituary in the Oxford Chronicle of 19 October 1917 is shown below:

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Postscript

Harry’s parents

• Walter Sumner Gibson died at the age of 68 in the first quarter of 1918.
• Mrs Julia Elizabeth Gibson remained at 9 Lathbury Road. until her own death at the age of 70 in the third quarter of 1922.

Harry’s widow

• Mrs Hester Gibson lived at 34 Station Road, Petersfield, Hampshire: she died in 1980.

Harry’s children

• John Sumner Townsend Gibson (born 1915) emigrated to Canada in c.1940 and married Dorothy Mary Williams on Vancouver Island in 1944.

• Helen Olivier Costeker Gibson (born 1917) was calligrapher to the Ashmolean. She did not marry, and died in Long Hanborough in 2008.

Harry’s first cousin was the famous actor, Lord Olivier.