Significant page update on my maternal grandfather – Eric Walter Hare. https://thesomme.wordpress.com/eric-hare/

And if it’s getting confusing, here we have Sydney Percy, Son of Henry (who did not fight in WW1 as far as I am aware) and Emily, nephew of Sydney Ernest, Percy and Spencer.

More details here: https://thesomme.wordpress.com/parkes-family/sydney-percy-parkes/

Not sure how I missed him. So there were three of them, first cousins to me, twice removed, two of whom died and one survived. Research and a page for Sydney Ernest will follow.

I am indebted to Mark Thompson for sending me this photograph of officers of the Coates Mission taken with the Royal Family in 1942 outside York House, Sandringham.

Mark’s grandfather, Wilfred Thompson – known as “Bloody Jim” and if you’d met him you know why, according to Mark! – is the second from the left in the back row, and my grandfather, Malcolm Hancock is next to him, third from the left. Mark believes that at least 5 members of the photo were in the Coates Mission, so now that’s possibly four.

If anyone knows the identity of the others, or any other information, please leave a comment.

I visited Madresfield yesterday and  had a chance to wander the gardens and consider the defences in WW2, when the house was one of four earmarked for the Royal Family, should they have had to have left London in a hurry. Part of my grandfather’s work in the Coates Mission was to visit these houses periodically  to see that the defences were in order.

View across the outer moat.

The inner moat which goes all the way round the house.

The ha-ha.

I was very sad to hear yesterday evening that Richard Holmes had died, aged 65. Intelligent, communicative, readable and knowledgeable, I enjoyed his work and style. Click on the picture for a link to a BBC article.

Interesting  Telegraph article Jan 2011 about Madresfield Court and how it was an escape refuge for the Royal Family in case of invasion in WWII. My Grandfather was in the Coates Mission and one of his jobs was visiting the four houses and checking that defences were in order.

“Well now, each of those houses had to be reconnoitered by mostly Gussy Tatham and myself and we used to go occasionally to see that all was well. It consisted of a series of slip trenches placed at strategic points around the perimeter of the house and the grounds so they could not be seen from outside. There were barbed wire entanglements of course, I don’t think they were actually in place or would not be put into place until we were actually called upon to defend that particular house in order that nothing untoward should appear to be going on at these places. The security was so vital.

So Tatham and I used to go round these places now and again to see that all was well, to see that the trenches hadn’t fallen in or something like that, to see that the roads were, to be sure of our road from Bushy, where we were stationed, to that particular house.”