Lest we forget

My Website is named ‘East Anglia, the Wildlife Landscape and People’ and I am conscious of the fact that up to now I have not mentioned people much, so as we approach remembrance Sunday I am putting that right by mentioning two East Anglian people.

The First is Canon Reginald Augustus Bignold (1860-1944) who was Rector of my home village of Carlton Colville in Suffolk, from 1898 to 1944.

I remember seeing his grave stone by the entrance of the village church when I used to use the church yard as a short cut as a child on my many wanderings around the village, but did not know much about him until my Mother gave me an old book she had, titled ‘The Carlton Colville Chronicles’ edited by J.R. Goffin.

The Carlton Colville Chronicles, copyright Parochial Church Council of St.Peter’s Carlton Colville

This book records the diary of Canon Bignold that he had written in the fly leaves of the Parish Records and give an insight into the village and the effect the First World War had on it, the villagers and Canon Bignold himself, imagine he could hear the Guns from France as the windows rattled in the rectory by the sound waves travelled over the North Sea to Suffolk, and the time he was followed by a Zeppelin as he walked from Oulton Broad to Carlton Colville.

I will end this Blog with the first two entries of his records for November 1914, the entries in the Parish Records increases in number and volume as the War progressed and I may from time to time place quotes of some of his records on the day they were recorded 100 years before.

The next person of East Anglia is my Grandfather Harold Baker, I never knew my Grandfather but what I knew of him was that he was born in 1899 (the year after Canon Bignold became rector of Carlton Colville), he was a fisherman and died as a result of an accident at Sea in 1946. But I know 100 years ago in 1914 he was in the Navy in Egypt as I have a photograph of him, looking very young at 15 or 16 years old.

Harold Baker, Egypt 1914

Finally a photo of some unknown ‘Lads’, we found this photograph in a bag that belonged to a Great Aunt of my wife, we do not know who they are, how old or where they were at the time, they all look very young and we think at least one of them must have been close to this great Aunt, we do not know if he or any of them in photograph came home.