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

THE END OF THE GREAT WAR IN FINDON

Copyright Valerie Martin 2003

Eight months after the Armistice, Peace Day was designated on Saturday 19th July 1919, and everyone in the village celebrated despite unsympathetic weather.

The Great War brought about a major change in farming on the Findon downland. This was the dispersal of a very large number of the Southdown sheep flocks due to fixed pricing and mutton not graded according to its quality. The famous and familiar Southdown breed was largely abandoned and a coarser sheep superseded them.

On the south wall of the nave in St. John the Baptist Church are two tablets commemorating the dead of the war that was to end all wars — and the Second World War. There is a sombre list of thirty-six names for the appalling  1914–1918 conflict. This was a crushing blow and a great sacrifice for a village of less than 800 inhabitants at the time.  Families were decimated by the war, which had almost wiped out a generation of menfolk.

It seems appropriate for me to record here the names of those who gave their lives in the Five Years' War. The names of the fallen and mourned are recorded here, together with details of their regiments and dates of death.

The sons of Hugh Richard Penfold Wyatt (owner of the Cissbury Estate) — Hugh Graystone Penfold and Geoffrey Wilfred Penfold were later to be commemorated by a new window at St. John the Baptist Church.  I have also learned that Hugh Richard Penfold Wyatt was buried at Alexandria (Chatby) Military and War Memorial Cemetery in Egypt, aged 25.

The Parish War Memorial stands in the Churchyard. The original structure was altered after the Second World War to include an additional plinth to remember the Findon men lost serving their country.

Here are a few odds and bobs ......

The above U-boat was commissioned on 8th May 1918 and did one patrol which ended on 11th November 1918, Armistice Day!.   She was under the command of Herbert Strohwasser and had sunk two ships (total 10,439 tons).   She was being towed to France but the line parted and she went aground at Hastings on 15th April 1919. There must have been significant damage as she was subsequently broken up.  

In 1920, a gentleman by the name of Frank Ball of Brooklyn Tower Road in nearby Worthing was rather dismayed that a First World War tank that had been presented to the town as a gift the year before, was being left to rot in the bushes near the main railway station.   

He is reputed to have said...

"It is a disgrace to the town to leave it to rust after having accepted it".  

He suggested moving this piece of armament to Montague Place.   

We would be surprised if that had been carried out  and it was still there today wouldn't we!

In 1929 there was a register of electors in the Horsham and Worthing Parliamentary Division and this revealed that women outnumbered men by 8,360.... a legacy of the First World War when so many of their menfolk had been killed.

Here's a story from nearby Durrington.  Nicholas Bray was a private in the Hampshire Regiment and was wounded in France during the First World War in 1914.     It was not until 1951 that made a rather strange discovery.   He did not know that for the intervening 36 years he had unknowingly been carrying a German bullet in his body.  The offending object was was discovered during an operation at Worthing Hospital to remove a stone the size of a duck’s egg from his bladder.   The bullet was found firmly attached to one end.   I wonder who was more surprised the surgeon or the patient.

This is Findon Village — www.findonvillage.com is a continually growing record created by Valerie Martin exclusively for documenting life in Findon.