![]() It was established as a school for needy boys and its primary purpose was to give the boys a trade. The School of Handicrafts in Eastworth Road, Chertsey, was founded in 1885 by Dr Thomas Hawksley, an East London doctor. The Chertsey Museum Interactive website tells us that: It would have been very difficult for a working-class woman to raise a family alone at the start of the twentieth century and, by 1911, the two boys were living at the School of Handicrafts For Poor Boys in Chertsey. In 1901, Emily and her two sons were living at 13 King’s Street, Chelsea (they were one of two families living in the property in what is now St Luke’s Street, close to the church). The boys were therefore both under two years old when William George senior died in early 1900. ![]() William junior was baptised in the same church the following year, although the family’s address by then was in Rawlings Street, Chelsea. Two of those who helped to create and maintain the war cemeteries we now see in France and Flanders were the Bicknell brothers from London.Įrnest Hugh Bicknell and his brother William George were born in Battersea, the sons of William George Bicknell, a butcher, and his wife Emily (née Self) who had married in 1897 at St George’s Church in Battersea. By 1918, some 587,000 graves had been identified and a further 559,000 casualties were registered as having no known grave.” The last of its Great War memorials was completed twenty years after the war’s end, only a year before a new war engulfed the continent. Once land for cemeteries and memorials had been guaranteed, the enormous task of recording the details of the dead began. ![]() ![]() It was a huge task, as their website says: “The Commission’s work began in earnest after the Armistice. The Imperial (since 1960 Commonwealth) War Graves Commission was established by Royal Charter in 1917, with the mission of caring for the graves of the fallen and memorials to the missing, following the earlier decision not to repatriate the bodies of those who died overseas during the war. Using those archives, this blog post tells the story of two ex-serviceman brothers from London who spent their post-war lives working for the Commission, helping to create and maintain the memorials to their fallen comrades. The Commission’s archive catalogue is available online, with many items digitised and newly accessible to us all from home. Whether we are visiting the battlefields of the Great War or a cemetery near to home, it’s likely that the most visible reminder of the war will be the bright, neat headstones of the war dead or the tall Cross of Sacrifice – the work of the Commonwealth War Graves Commission. ![]()
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