Leatherhead War Memorials : Francis Charles Brockett Coward

The Cross in the Tower
Hanging on a wall of the tower of St Mary & St Nicholas Leatherhead is a simple rough wooden cross, blackened with age.

Frank Haslam, website editor for Leatherhead Parish Church had been wondering about that cross for some time but never managed to get close enough to read the inscriptions.

Could it be one of the people being researched for the Leatherhead War Memorial Research project by the Friends of the Parish Church ?

One day the light was just right for Frank to see that indeed the inscriptions appeared to be military, just making out Private FCB Coward, and noting most of the digits of his service number.

If the light is right you can see that there are metal tags pinned to it, like the tags you used to be able to stamp out your name on at railway stations.

A quick check on the Commonwealth War Graves database revealed all: -

510102 Private Francis Charles Brockett Coward, A Coy. 1st/14th Bn., London Regt. (London Scottish), who died on Thursday 29th August 1918, age 26. [In fact the cross in the Tower says his unit was 1/4 Londons.]

Private Coward is buried in the Honourable Artillery Company (HAC) Cemetery at Ecoust St Mein, in the Pas de Calais, grave reference V.K.21.

He was the son of Agnes Brockett Coward of 1 Pembury Grove, Lower Clapton, London and of the late Samson Coward, native of Renfrewshire.

But what is his connection with Leatherhead?

Private Coward is not mentioned on any of the other memorials in Leatherhead.
On the Parish Church memorial he is not listed among those who served.
His family do not appear to have a Leatherhead connection.

So what is his marker doing in Leatherhead's parish church tower? This is the mystery.

Frank has now been able to inspect and photograph the cross. There is no note attached at the back to explain why it is in the Tower. The foot of the cross is discoloured, presumably from the soil of the grave. These wooden crosses were used as temporary markers until the Imperial War Graves Commission provided the now familiar headstones in the post war cemetery program.

The cemetery in which Private Coward lies commemorates nearly 2,000 WWI casualties, about half of whom are unidentified.

Ecoust St Mein is a village between Arras, Cambrai and Bapaume - the HAC Cemetery is about 800 metres south of the village on the west side of the D956 road to Beugenatre.

It is a sobering thought that Private Coward is just one of 1.7 million men and women from Britain and the Commonwealth who gave their lives in two world wars.

grave V.K.21, HAC Cemetery Ecoust St Mein, Pas de Calais:
THEY NEVER DIE
WHO LIVE IN THE HEARTS
OF THOSE WHO LOVE THEM
with thanks to Jon Miller, N Devon, 2002

2003 - Thanks to WWI researcher Ian Whitlock and Alun Roberts of the Leatherhead & Local District History Society we have now unravelled some of the mystery surrounding why the actual WW1 grave marker cross of Private FCB Coward is hanging in our Parish Church tower.

It has now been established from the 1901 Census records that Francis Coward’s mother Agnes was a 32 year old widow in 1901. She was by profession a charwoman, born in Kingston, resident at the time of the Census in Church St Leatherhead. With her were another Agnes Coward (11), Vera Coward (7) and Ivy Coward (5) – (Vera and Ivy were both born at Leatherhead) and Francis CB Coward who is listed as a "scholar" aged 9 (which fits his age when killed) born in Houston, Scotland.

Given that Samson, his Scottish father seems to have died between 1895 and 1901, it would seem likely that his mother obtained the grave marker in the 1920s (when marker crosses were replaced by headstones) and arranged for it to be lodged in the church. For whatever reason Francis Coward’s name is not on the town memorial nor in the Parish Church Chapel of Remembrance. Possibly the placing of the cross served to compensate for this omission. At the time of the recording of his burial by the then Imperial War Graves Commission in the 1920s, his mother was a resident of Lower Clapton, London.

In Leatherhead his parents lived in a small cottage (£10 annual rent) situated off Church Street in an Alley which ran next to what used to be Clears. It probably had two or three bedrooms. The adjacent shop was James Batten’s tobacconists. The cottage was demolished in 1913 when the existing Bank was built and the Swan Corner widened. Samson was the householder in an 1895 Directory but died shortly afterwards. His occupation is not known. The family came to Leatherhead in 1894.

The 1911 street directory shows an F Coward (initial only) shown as resident at a house in The Withies (no. 3, 1 & 2 are just by the present day Catholic Church and Ian was told that they may have been brickmakers’ homes). The lower part of Copthorne Road had not yet been built. Frank’s landlord was the eccentric James (‘Jimmy’) Edwards with whom he apparently shared the house in 1911. James usually preferred to sleep in hedgerows, however! He was the son of a wealthy Bridge Street butcher, in whose shop his three brothers worked. He did not himself, having always been a little peculiar. It is not certain that Frank Coward and Private Francis Coward were one and the same, but it is probable. There was no other Coward family in Leatherhead at the time. Further work on the parish magazines may reveal more about the placing of the cross.

How you could help
Frank intends one day to research the post World War I parish church magazines to see if he can throw any further light on the mystery - but do any of you know the answer?