THIS IS FINDON VILLAGE — www.findonvillage.com  created by Valerie Martin, contains scenes from her home village of Findon, West Sussex, U.K.

THE CONSTABLE FAMILY OF FINDON

Copyright Valerie Martin 2005

First published in Along the Furlong in May 2005

If you stand on the top of the Findon Downs, particularly on a summer day as I have done, and scan the far horizons, you will begin to appreciate that this is a unique environment.   Despite a first impression of it being a green rolling wasteland, here is an ancient landscape where many families have witnessed events both mundane and extraordinary.  

One such family to look out on our familiar Findon landscape was the Constable household spanning the 19th and 20th centuries.

Why have I selected the Constable family?  This is because in May 2003, Pam Stepney of North End in Findon, wrote to me saying they had quite a history buried in the village.    It is, in fact, an extraordinarily sad story.

To start at the beginning, Albert Constable was born in the nearby village of Storrington just north-west of Findon.  As a young man he enlisted with a Scottish regiment, the Seaforth Highlanders, and served with them in India, Egypt and Afghanistan in the early 1880s.

By 1885 he had returned to civilian life and met and married Ruth who had been born in Bedford.  They were living in Chichester when their first two children were born, a daughter Ruth in 1886 and their first son Thomas in 1887.

Soon after the birth of Thomas the family moved eastwards across country to reside in Findon.   It was here that Albert found work as a gardener on the Muntham Estate to supplement his army pension.   They lived at the Lodge at Muntham. Four more sons were born in Findon — Albert in 1889, William in 1891, George in 1893 and Arthur in 1896. The boys were followed by a second daughter, Rachel, in 1898.

About this time Albert and Ruth Constable and their family had moved to 2 Mill Cottages where their last child, a son, Alfred was born in 1902.

There is no need for me to say that the Constable family was a large one growing up in the village where they went to school and, no doubt played a part in village life.  Little did they know what lay ahead of them as the war clouds gathered.

By the time he was 13-years-old, Thomas, the eldest son was already employed in garden work, perhaps helping his father.  Albert Junior later joined the police force in Brighton.  It is not known what employment the other brothers followed.

At the outbreak of the First World War in 1914, volunteers poured into the recruiting centres and the Constable family were among them.  The brothers Thomas, William and Albert Constable all joined the Dorset Regiment.  Albert enlisted at Chatham in Kent and I guess it is likely that his brothers may well have joined at the same time.   He was called up on Army Reserve in the 1st Battalion Dorset Regiment on 4th August 1914.  

George (like many other Findon men of that era) joined the county's own regiment, the Royal Sussex, and signed on at Chichester in West Sussex.

Tragedy struck when 27-year-old Lance Corporal Thomas Constable was the first Findon man to be killed in World War I on 26th October 1914.  The Worthing Gazette of 11th November gave the following graphic report of his death.

Thomas is remembered at the Le Touret Memorial at the east end of the Le Touret cemetery in France.  The memorial commemorates over 13,000 men who laid down their lives in that area and who have no known grave of their own.

The following Spring (1915) brought further calamitous news to the Constable family of Findon.

The Royal Sussex Regiment suffered heavy casualties in the war and Sergeant George Constable aged 21 was so badly wounded in action in France that he had to be brought back to England.  He was like so many that made it home to military hospitals, only to die of his gruesome injuries in Camberwell, Surrey on 5th April 1915.

Nearly five months later, on 25th September 1915, Sergeant William Constable aged 24-years was killed.  He is remembered at the Loos Memorial France along with 17,000 men the majority of whom died in the Battle of Loos.

Morale was low by Christmas in 1918 when the final blow hit the stricken Constable family (now living at Holm Lynn in the High Street).    There was yet more sad news from the front on Christmas Eve.   This was of the death of their son Albert.  He had been a prisoner of war in Germany since the earliest days of the hostilities.    Albert was the fourth of their sons to be killed in the war and his remains were laid to rest in Cologne Southern Cemetery.

The agony of the Great War was eventually over at last and with it almost a million British, colonial and dominion troops lay dead.  Almost an entire generation was wiped out, exceeding all previous wars with the scale of its casualties.

Perhaps it was a little comfort to Albert and Ruth Constable in their declining years that the body of their son George, who died in Camberwell of his wounds, was brought home to Findon.  He was buried in the churchyard of St John the Baptist and his grave stone remembers not only him but also his three brothers who gave their lives in the war to end all wars.

Just how much tragedy can one family take?

Continue if you would like to read about The Great War Years in Findon.

THIS IS FINDON VILLAGE — was launched by Valerie Martin in January 1999 and will grow to be a historical record of life in Findon, West Sussex, U.K.