DEVERELL Herbert George

The following information is courtesy of the researcher of the casualties on the Blockley War Memorials:
Herbert Deverell was born in Oxfordshire in 1877, son of a farmer. He was at home in 1881, but ten years later was a boarder at Lewisham House School in Western-super-Mare in Somerset. (The type of education he received here will have been very different from that in his local school, given that two of the three resident masters were teachers of English, and English and classics, the third a professor of French and German.) He has not yet been found in the 1901census but in 1903 he married Mabel Isaac in the Chipping Norton district of Oxfordshire. Between 1904 and 1910 four daughters were born at Newington in Oxfordshire, presumably at Holcombe, Oxfordshire, near Wallingford, which is a hamlet in Newington, and where Herbert was farming in 1911. At some point before Herbert enlisted for service in World War 1 the family moved to Rectory Farm, Aston Magna, which was his address when he died in 1917. His family – widow and four daughters – remained in Aston after the war.

Herbert enlisted in the army locally at Shipton on Stour at an unknown date and served as a private in the 14th (Service) Battalion of the Hampshire Regiment. This battalion was formed in Portsmouth in September 1914, adopted by the War Office in May 1915 and went to France in March 1916. One document suggests that he was previously in the “Hants Carb Yeo”, that is the Hampshire Yeomanry, also known as the Carabiniers. If this is so, the service number allocated to him is valid for enlistment in 1915, and thus the posting will have been brief. The pattern is typical of a conscripted married man, attested in 1915, called to service in mid 1916 and posted to whatever regiment required him.

None of his personal military documents have survived, but there is military documentation which shows that he served in France and Flanders and that he was killed in action on 26th September 1917 at the age of 40.

Herbert was well-off. After his death probate was issued for an estate of GBP4279, currently (2014) equivalent to about GBP265,000. His family remained in the Blockley area after the war. His widow was living at Milldene, Blockley, when she died in the Cottage Hospital, Moreton-in-Marsh in 1933, aged 57. The following year two of the daughters were married at Blockley, to a schoolmaster from Oxford and a medical practitioner from Ealing in Middlesex.

From the Medals Card and Hampshire Regiment medal rolls:
Herbert G. Deverell, 14 Bn/Hampshire Regiment, Private, 33210, Military and British medals

From Soldiers’ Effects:
Herbert George Deverell, Private, 33210
GBP1 7s 1d plus GBP4 war gratuity to executor Harold J

Herbert Deverell has no known grave, the photograph available shows his name on Tyne Cot Memorial.