HISTORIC LINKS: THE CARILLON AND LOUGHBOROUGH GRAMMAR SCHOOL
Loughborough Grammar School was open to the public for Loughborough Heritage Open Weekend on 20th and 21st September and I was welcomed there by the charming and erudite John Weitzel, former headmaster and now the school archivist.
Loughborough Grammar School, founded in 1495, has many links with the Loughborough Carillon, and funded one of its 47 bells to commemorate the 57 former pupils who died in WW1. Many of the men on the school’s WW1 Roll of Honour are also included on ours, and in this blog I investigate the stories of just a few of them.
Brothers in arms
The firm William Moss & Sons played a major role in building the Carillon itself. Two of William Moss’s grandsons who attended the Grammar School for short periods were killed in action in WW1. Gerald Alec Moss, a 2nd Lieutenant in the Manchester Regiment, died in August 1918, aged only 19, while his older brother Howard James Moss, 2nd Lieutenant in the Leicestershire Regiment, was killed in October 1915, also just 19. Bell number 8 in the Carillon was contributed by William Moss, dedicated to these two young men.
Arthur Donald Chapman (1892-1916), 2nd Lieutenant in the North Staffordshire Regiment, killed on the first day of the battle of the Somme, also has a Carillon bell in his honour, given by his parents. He had been Captain of Football at the Grammar School.
Two more Chapmans, brothers and ex-Grammar School pupils, but not related to Arthur, are also commemorated on the Carillon. The story of Hubert Frank Chapman, 2nd Lieutenant in the Royal Engineers, is a particularly sad one. He served in France but was sent home suffering shell shock and paralysis. Despite this, he was reposted to Egypt in 1916 but only lasted three weeks before being invalided out. He died in the London County Asylum on 31st March 1917, aged 32. His brother Captain John Theophilis Chapman, serving in the Leicestershire Regiment, died of head wounds in May 1915. Both men have graves in Loughborough Cemetery, so at least their family was able to bury them at home.
A famous botanist
Charles Frederick Ball (1879-1915) has a unique connection to the Carillon. He served in the Dublin Fusiliers and was killed in action in Turkey. His passion was for botany and horticulture, and before the war he held senior posts in prestigious organisations including Kew Gardens and Dublin’s Royal Botanic Gardens. He also discovered and gave his name to the flowering shrub Escallonia ‘C. F .Ball’, a specimen of which flourishes and blooms just behind the Carillon to this day.
Casualties at Frezenberg, May 1915
Four ex-Grammar School boys were killed at the Battle of Frezenberg on 13th May 1915. This was a very dark day for the Leicestershire Yeomanry, when 94 of their number were killed and 93 wounded, fighting courageously against heavy odds. It was also the darkest day for Loughborough Grammar School, the only date on which four ex-pupils were lost. Henry Archer Grudgings was a Private who was 24 when he was killed. Lance Corporal William Kent was another casualty, aged 25. He’d been a keen sportsman while at the school. Trooper Leslie Moir, 21, and Corporal John Needham, 23, also lost their lives at Frezenberg.
Awarded the Military Cross
William Frederick Jelley, born in Syston in 1895, and Second Lieutenant with the Yorkshire Regiment, was awarded the Military Cross a few months before he died of his wounds in November 1917, aged 22. His citation read: “For conspicuous gallantry and devotion to duty in handling his platoon. Although wounded in the head he continued to lead his platoon until he had gained his objective. Later in the day, he was again wounded, having his thigh broken, but although in great pain and unable to move, he continued to urge on his men, and by his splendid pluck and fortitude kept up their spirits until after dark, when he was carried from the field.” His father was at his bedside when he died in a French hospital, after having his leg amputated.
Major Francis Bird Carter (1875-1915) was born in Middlesex and served in the Australian Infantry. He had emigrated to Australia in 1901, where he married and established an accountancy firm. He was killed at Gallipoli on 27th April 1915.
The memorial clock
Grammar School staff were not immune to terrible personal loss. Headmaster Bingham Turner and his wife Dora lost their son Roger Bingham Turner when he was killed in Iraq in 1916, aged 20, a 2nd Lieutenant with the Cheshire Regiment. He had been a pupil at the school in 1905-06 and later became a classicist at Jesus College Cambridge. His parents commissioned a clock in his memory, which chimes to this day from the school tower, its design including the family motto, vive ut vivas (live now so that you may live hereafter).
A fitting tribute to all the Loughborough Grammar School boys who gave their lives in the Great War.
