Gordon Leonard Stapley

Army, Registered War Grave, Royal Berkshire Regiment, St. Laurence's Church

Gordon Leonard Stapley
Private 41492
6th Royal Berkshire Regt.

 Division 54

Stapley grave

 

Gordon Leonard Stapley was the only son of Mr W J Stapley, of Queen Victoria St. Reading.  He had attended Kendrick School, later amalgamated to form Reading School.  He is buried in a registered war grave and commemorated on a kerb stone of the family grave.   His name also appears on the special memorial in the War Plot.  His grave was lost but the author found the grave and after much digging revealed the kerbstones which had sunk below ground level, although nature will doubtless take its course and the grave may be lost again.

 Gordon Stapley was very artistic and was by trade a stone mason, he worked for his father who had a business designing and making memorial monuments.   His last work was the War Shrine at Knowl Hill Church.  Here to the years and nature have taken their toll and lichens have obscured the 197 names of those soldiers, sailors and airman who were killed and are commemorated on the memorial.

 Gordon Stapley joined the Berkshire Yeomanry in January 1917 and was later transferred to the 6th Battalion of the Royal Berkshire Regt.  He was sent to the front and 24 hours after his arrival was wounded by a shell which landed two yards away from him, causing compound fractures of the right arm.  He was sent to Fazakerley Hospital, Liverpool, and appeared to be progressing satisfactorily when pneumonia developed.  He died on 31st October 1917, aged 25 years.  His was a military funeral.

J Starkie

Army, Other Regiments, Registered War Grave

Driver J. Starkie
T/16298 292 Company
Army Service Corps.

Division 49

 space for headstone

J. Starkie  was 34 years old and died on the 8th August 1915.  He was  the son of Samuel and Mary Starkie of Blackburn, Lancashire and  the husband of Sophia Starkie, of 40, Sunny Bank, Mytholmroyd, Yorkshire.

Starkie died in a tragic boating accident whilst based near Reading.  He and Private J. J. McKeever, an Irish man born at Waterside, were in a Canadian canoe on the Thames at Tilehurst when the canoe capsized and both soldiers were drowned.  Neither man could swim.  The Coroners verdict was that of “Accidental Drowning”.

During the war years there were many such accidents on the Thames, sometimes of army personelle and sometimes civilians and children.  Many drownings were accidental, some were acts of suicide.

Mrs Starkie attended the funeral and also Thomas Logue, the brother in law of McKeeveer.  A volley was fired and the “Last Post played”.  The grave of Driver Starkie is marked by a CWGC war pattern headstone.  Private McKeever is also buried in the cemetery in Division 14

Charles Stewart

Army, Commemorated name/s, Other Regiments, Ypres

Charles Stewart M.M.
Sergeant 8929
2nd West Yorkshire Regiment.

Division 35

 CIMG2114 Stewart C MM name

Charles Goldsmith Stewart was the son of Thomas Perkins Stewart and Ellen Stewart nee Goldsmith. He had one sister called Nina. His father had been an ironmonger but by the time of the 1901 census he was deceased. The family were then living at 83 London Road, Reading. By 1911 20year old Charles was serving in India with the 1st West Yorkshire Regiment. He is commemorated on his parents grave in Reading Cemetery number 12261. 

 He was  killed in action in July 1917 aged 26 years.  He has no known grave and his name is commemorated on the Menin Gate Memorial to the Missing, Ypres.  Panel 21. His sister, who was living at 105, Grovelands Road, Reading was listed in the additional information section of the CWGC register.

 It is not yet known how he gained his Military Medal.