World War Two Cemeteries - A photographic guide to the cemeteries and memorials of WW2
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BROUGHTON (ST. MARY) CHURCHYARD

Oxfordshire

England

GPS Coordinates: Latitude: 52.04175, Longitude: -1.3915

Location Information

Broughton is a small village to the South-West of Banbury in Oxfordshire. The Church is located close to Broughton Castle.


There are 2 Commonwealth burials of the 1914-18 war here.
​
Picture
2793 Lance Corporal
Frederick Mead Hancock
2nd/1st 
Queen's Own Worcestershire Hussars (Worcester Yeomanry)
25th June 1915

The information below supplied by 'The Ellesmerian Club', the alumni organisation for Ellesmere College where Frederick was a pupil.

Frederick Mead Hancock joined the Great Western Railway as a ‘Lad clerk’ at Chipping Norton in 1902. He also worked at Evesham and then Littleton & Badeley before he transferred as an ‘adult’ clerk to the goods depot at Moreton-in-the-Marsh. He returned to Evesham and then moved to Pershore as Chief Clerk in 1910. Whilst stationed there he boarded a few miles away in the village of Wyre Piddle and was still there when he formally enlisted into the Worcester Yeomanry (Queen’s Own Worcestershire Hussars) in September 1914. He was engaged to a Miss G. Derrett from the village at the time he signed his Attestation Papers.
 
Fred’s service records have not survived and so very little is known about his life in the army. It is known that he joined the 2/1st Battalion as Private Hancock, Service No: 2793. His unit acted as a training / reserve unit for the 1st Battalion and they were posted to Cirencester in April. It was whilst stationed there that Fred suffered from sunstroke whilst drilling. His condition worsened and he died of meningitis on 25th June. He was buried at North Newington where his widower father farmed. Fred’s life is commemorated on memorials at Wyre Piddle, St. Mary’s Church, Broughton and his name has been added to the memorial at Ellesmere College. At the time of his death he held the rank of Lance-Corporal.
 
Fred’s association with the college began when he was one of eighteen new boys who were admitted in January 1900. He was allocated a bed in the ‘Edward’ dormitory and placed in Form Lower III under the tutelage of Mr. R. H. Philipps, himself an Old Ellesmerian. Fred was thirteen years old and there were one hundred and seventy-four boys on the nominal roll. 
 
The college prospectus stated that it was “conducted on the principles of the old Public Schools of the Church of England, and is intended under God's blessing to meet the wants of persons of very small means, whose sons may be boarded and educated at an expense little exceeding the cost of food”. The fees were “fixed for the present at twenty-five guineas a year, and beyond these there are no other necessary charges except for books and tradesmen's bills. A boy's total expenses need not on an average exceed nine guineas per term”.
 
Few records of his time at the college have survived but it is known that he represented his dormitory at rugby, playing forward, and out on the cricket wicket. He left Ellesmere in April 1901 but never maintained any contact with the college or the Old Ellesmerian Club.
 
Fred was one of seven children of Charles, a farmer, and his wife, Ellen Anne. There were five sons and two daughters and, at the time of the 1881 Census, the family lived at Brailes, Warwickshire. At the time Fred was admitted to Ellesmere, his father was farming at The Leys Farm, Enstone, Oxon. Misfortune struck the family in 1910 when their mother died. A year later, their widower father was at Park Farm, North Newington.


Other Burial Details

10303 Private George Butler, 5th Bn. Oxford and Bucks Light Infantry, died 5th October 1915, aged 21. Son of William And Mary Butler, of Broughton" His headstone bears the inscription "Rest In The Lord"




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Disclaimer


The casualty numbers for each cemetery are taken from the C. W. G. C. site. We are aware that there can be discrepancies in the numbers quoted.
(The G. P. S. Coordinates are also taken from the C. W. G. C. site)


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