THE FORGOTTEN FALLEN
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LEONARD WILLIAM HUGHES Private 204775 15th (Hampshire Yeomanry) Battalion, Hampshire Regiment
Died of Wounds aged 24 23rd March 1918
Buried in Grevillers British Cemetery, Nr Bapaume, France
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Leonard William Hughes birth in the first quarter of 1894 was registered in Aylesbury. In the 1901 census, he is shown as having been born and living in Hardwick with his sister Lizzie and parents William and Jane. His father is listed as an Agricultural Labourer and his grandparents George and Selina lived next door. By 1911, as a 17-year-old, although still living with his parents, he is working in a farm as a Labourer. The home later called Leonard Cottage is described as near Thornes Cottage. The Hardwick Parish Registers show that at least four generations of the Hughes family have lived in Hardwick since the 1760s. Leonard’s father William, the sixth of ten children, was born in 1861 and married his mother Jane Miller in 1884. William’s father George, the fourth of nine children of another William who had married Eliza Watkins in 1820 in the Parish Church of St. Mary’s in Hardwick, had himself married, at the same church in 1849, Selina Honour. Both the Watkins and Honour families had also lived in Hardwick and Weedon for many generations.
Grevillers British Cemetery has a very imposing brick and stone entrance and surrounding wall, designed by Sir Edward Lutyens, some 3 kilometres from Bapaume in the Pas de Calais. The village of Grevillers was occupied by Commonwealth troops on 14th March 1917. An Australian casualty clearing station was posted nearby in April and May and started to use the cemetery for the next 12 months. At this point it was recaptured by the Germans during their great advance. In August 1918, the Australians were back, and the cemetery began to expand. Of 2,106 Commonwealth servicemen buried here, only189 are not identified. Leonard’s last resting place, as with all other Commonwealth War Graves, is kept to an immaculate standard and this site rewards the visitor within its serenity. |
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GO TO Forgotten Fallen list for more biographies of the men commemorated on the Weedon War Memorial.
