Lest We Forget...

WW1 memorial bench, Cuxton church...

Behind the graveyard of Cuxton Church is a rather splendid memorial bench (built by Steve Portchmouth, who carved the Brockles seat) bearing the names of the 14 young men from the village who died in the First World War, each set in a carved poppy on the bench back-rest. The bench was installed by volunteers in November 2018, along with an information board that gives a few details about each of the fallen.

WW1 memorial, Cuxton church, information board...

"Cuxton Rocks": painted pebbles left by the memorial boards...

(As of October 2021 they have been joined by another board and memorial carving - also by Steve Porchmouth - commemorating the five men from Cuxton who lost their lives in the Second World War.)

WW2 memorials, Cuxton Church...

One name on the WW1 memorial caught my eye – that of Percy William Chalklen. He features in a locally well-known and rather poignant photograph from 1913 (and which features on the back cover of Derek Church’s book – Cuxton: a Kentish Village), shown below...

Percy Chalklen and Elsie Camber outside of Cuxton Post Office, 1913...

Percy and his young fiancé, Elsie Camber, both aged 21, are shown sitting on their bikes outside of Percy’s mum and dad’s post office and general store on the corner of May Street and Cuxton Street (now Bush Road – the shops are now both hairdressers), where Percy worked as an assistant greengrocer and as the local "telegram boy". Percy and Elsie married in March 1915 and lived around the corner from the shop, in May Street, before Percy joined the Kent Cyclists Regiment to serve his country in WW1.

The photograph shows Percy as a vital, strikingly handsome chap, with a pretty young fiancé and his whole life ahead him. Undoubtedly just like countless others, whose promising lives were soon to be cut short by the pointless slaughter of war.

Percy was killed in action at Flanders on 21^st August 1918. He was 25.

Elsie got married again in December 1921, to Noble Edgar (“Ted”) Allcorn.

Ted played the organ at the church and was a keen bell-ringer. By all accounts he was a likeable and popular man, one who is still fondly remembered by some of the church bell-ringing team, even today. One of them told me about the time Ted’s trousers fell down whilst ringing the bells for a church service! His fellow ringers did not allow him to forget this, leaving a short length of rope in the tower for him, with a label on it saying “For Emergency Use”…

Elsie and Ted lived in Cuxton (latterly in William Road) until Elsie passed away in 1981, aged 89. Ted died in 1989, aged 92. They are buried together in the Cuxton church graveyard. A picture of their gravestone is shown below...

Elsie and Ted Allcorn's grave, Cuxton churchyard...

A small tale of small lives, perhaps, but tales like this matter. They show us that sacrifice, horror and grief inevitably gives way to stability, happiness and laughter, albeit perhaps not universally and perhaps not for long. But hopefully the latter conditions of the current cycle of human history will remain with us, the lucky ones, for a while yet.

Wreaths laid at the memorial plaques in Cuxton Church, Remembrance Sunday 2021.
Laid by (L to R) the Royal Engineers Professional Engineering Wing, Cuxton Parish Council
and the Cuxton and Halling Girl Guides... 

References:

1.    Cuxton: A Kentish Village by Derek Church (published by Arthur J Cassell Ltd, 1976, ISBN 0 903253 12 7), frontispiece text

2.    FreeBMD Civil Registration Index

3.    WW1 Information Board behind Cuxton Church

4.    Cuxton and Halling Church Magazine October 2013.

Note: The magazine states that Elsie was the wife of another of the Cuxton WW1 fallen, Frederick Pooley, before she remarried. A search of the civil registration index of marriages suggests that this is incorrect, and the story is as I have told it above.