George Alan William Hulley
Painting called "The Battlefield at Night" by FJ Mears (1890-1929)
George Alan William Hulley (known as Alan) was a private in the 6th Battalion, King’s Own Yorkshire Light Infantry (KOYLI) serving in Belgium in 1917. On 11th October the battalion was moving up from reserve into the front line, as recorded in the war diary:
On the following map, the town of Ypres is in the top left. 'Bedford House' (the British name for a chateau, now the site of a cemetery) is in the bottom left corner, Sanctuary Wood is in the centre right and Polygon Wood is in the top right. The red line I have drawn represents the general direction the battalion moved:
The ground was atrocious. When the
diary refers to stopping in shell holes at Sanctuary Wood, this is what they
are referring to:
This is the view from a defensive feature named 'Stirling Castle' by the Allies, looking to Sanctuary Wood, the tree stumps in the distance; this photo is from 23rd September, just over two weeks before 6th KOYLI passed through.
Of course, the troops didn't literally have to walk through this mud. They used ‘corduroy tracks’ laid down by working parties:
Irish Guards soldiers resting while carrying duckboards, 10th October 1917 at Langemarck, a few miles north of where 6th KOYLI went forward.
While this does not show 6th KOYLI it gives an idea of what they might have experienced.
Finally they arrived in the front line south of Polygon Wood and took
over the trenches where they stayed for five days. Of the 300 men that left Bedford House, 50 had become casualties by that time, mainly from shell bursts but only one casualty occurred during the move up to the trenches: Alan Hulley went missing and was not seen again. He has no known grave and his name is
recorded on the Tyne Cot Memorial:
The scale of Tyne Cot is amazing:
George was aged 19, born in Toxteth in Liverpool on 1st July 1898. His father, George Richard Hulley, was an accountant; his mother, Amy Elizabeth Charlton, was a schoolteacher. On 25th August when baby George was eight weeks old, his mother died:
In 1901 George senior was in Toxteth Park, living with his sister and a servant. George junior, of Alan as I will call him from here on to avoid confusion, was staying with his grandmother, George’s brother and a second sister.
We don’t know what
happened after 1901 but by George had moved to
Bearsden and was living in a house called Leamington, still working as a
book-keeper. While there are no street
numbers on the valuation roll, the name of a neighbouring property has not changed and it is possible to identify Leamington on the east side of Drymen Road, in between Gartconnel Drive and
Ralston Road:
The family were still there at the time of the 1911 Census: George, his sister Mary, Alan and a servant, 19-year old Anna Caldecott from East Kilbride. George’s job is now “advertising agent”.
The Milngavie and
Bearsden Herald only mentions the Hulley name once, in this account of a fair
to raise money for All Saints Church:
In 1912, George married again, to Ethel Peppercorn; given that he was in Bearsden and she was in Bromley, it's not clear how they met.
We also know that at some point Alan changed schools. He had been educated at the High School of Glasgow up to this point but he subsequently went to Durham Cathedral School as a boarder. Could this the change have been when his father married?
By 1915 George and Ethel were living at 60 Ravenswood Drive, Shawlands. In his probate record, Alan has two addresses: 27 South Street, Durham and The Moor, Kirkham.
While none of the family was still in the Bearsden area, someone remembered him with sufficient fondness to propose his name for a place on the war memorial.
The servant's story
In the 1911 Census, the Hulleys' domestic servant was
19-year old Anna W Caldecott from East Kilbride. But there is no record of any girl born with
that surname (or variants) anywhere in Scotland for 1892-3.
Searching identified her 1921 Census record, living in Chiswick in west London:
Here is the approximate site of 11 Hartington Road today,
where properties average over £2 million; the River Thames runs past the bottom
of the garden (by the trees on the left).
The structure of the household is a female head of household (Esther Pope), her widowed mother, her sister, a boarder, a servant and Anna whose relationship to the household is ‘nurse’. (Her occupation is given as ‘hospital nurse’ but her place of employment is the home address.) My interpretation is that she was a nurse for the mother, Alice.
The age given for Anna matches the 1911 Census age and
suggests a birth date of early January 1893 or possibly the last days of
December 1892. An e has been added to
the end of her surname, Caldecott. We
also find her middle initial W stands for Wyse.
Guessing that Wyse would be her mother’s maiden name I went
back to Scotland’s People and found two births in New Kilpatrick (Bearsden) for
Caldecotts, mother’s maiden name Wyse, in 1896 and 1906:
From these (Jane’s birth record shown) I discovered her mother was called Elizabeth but she married Jane’s father, Thomas on 1st June 1894, around 18 months after my estimate of when Anna was born. Now the lack of a birth record in the name of Caldecott made sense – although I cannot find one for Wyse either.
The first Census when Anna would have been alive was 1901
but she was not living with Elizabeth and Thomas. Guessing Anna would be living with a married
sibling of Elizabeth or with her mother I found Anna’s maternal grandparents
were Neil and Elizabeth Wyse. Sure
enough, in the 1901 Census, Anna Wyse lived with her widowed grandmother, Caroline
Wyse, in a 2-room house at 13 Castlebank Villas:
While the listing is for Renfrew, Paisley Heritage Centre have helped me understand how much the boundaries have changed and this small street still exists, in between Anniesland Road and Great Western Road just by Anniesland Cross. While I suspect the houses Anna and Caroline lived in are long gone, I suspect they were in the same style as those on Munro Place:
Given its proximity to a laundry and dye works, it might not have had good air quality.
The family do not appear to be wealthy and Anna probably attended the local school and left at 14 to begin work and earn money (around 1906 or 1907; gran Caroline died in 1909 back in East Kilbride). It’s difficult to believe it is coincidence when next we see her in 1911 with the Hulleys this is in Bearsden, given that her mother and siblings were here.
The next glimpse we have of her is passing an exam,
presumably a nursing qualification in 1915 while based at Woodilee Hospital, a
large psychiatric ‘asylum’ (long-stay hospital) in Lenzie.
Then in 1921 she was in Chiswick working for the Popes. The final trace I can find of Anna is marrying Crichton Smith in Brentford in the first few months of 1924. I can’t identify Crichton Smith or find any trace of either of them after this.
But finally, searching on girls born with the surname Wyse in the early 1890s, I found her:
So Anna was born in 1891, not 1892, on 1st December at 207 (possibly 209) Centre Street, which would have been in Tradeston, Glasgow. Elizabeth does not record a home address and says she is the daughter of a blacksmith (not true).
207-209 are ringed in black; Eglington Road runs north-south in the right hand half of the map.
The sire from street view, looking north.
The Caldecotts
Elizabeth Wyse was Anna’s birth mother. She married Thomas Caldecott, from Mold in
Flintshire on 1st June 1894.
They had at least five children together, Elizabeth in 1895, Jane in
1897, John in 1900, Neil in 1904, and Mary in 1906.
This is the 1901 Census record.
Thomas’s job was as a coachman and while the family lived in
a flat on at Douglas Place at Bearsden Cross, he seems to have been employed at
a big house called Carrickarden which is located on the east side of Drymen
Road, opposite Abbotsford Nursing Home at the junction with Canniesburn Road.
In the middle of 1907 Thomas became ill. He died in April 1908 in what would have been called Bellsdyke Hospital in more recent times, and Larbert Asylum, another long-stay psychiatric hospital.
By 1911, only the two youngest children were still at home
with Elizabeth in a cottage by West Chapelton House.
I tentatively identify this building on today’s map:
The Popes
The family Anna worked for in 1921. William, the patriarch had died by 1921 but
he worked as a saddler. It’s possible
their ability to afford the house by the Thames a servant and a nurse came from
their first son, William, who rose to become Professor Chemistry at Cambridge
University. His parents have been
described as staunch and active Wesleyans, but I could not find any other
biographical information on him that throws light on his family.
There were at least six other children: Alice who was a
clerk in the civil service, Thomas, Alexander, Esther who was head of household
in 1921, Bessie and John. In 1921 only
Esther and Bessie were still at home.
Helen Gertrude Dyson was a boarder and also a clerk for the civil
service, while Jessie Elizabeth Milroy was their servant; both had been living
at number 11 in 1911 as well.
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