Henry Aldwinckle

Name	Henry Aldwinckle
Corps	Lincolnshire Yeomanry
Rank	Private
Service No.	1291
Date/Place of entry	1915
Date of death
Memorial/Grave

Henry Aldwinckle was born in 1889 in Somerby in Lincolnshire, the fourth son and fifth child of Yeoman Aldwinckle and his second wife Helen nee Worman. For more information on this branch of the family see the account of Percy Aldwinckle.

The family moved in the 1890s to Shippon Manor near Abingdon in Berkshire (in Oxfordshire since 1974) where Yeoman continued to farm until his death in May 1901. He left the considerable sum of £14,580 (equivalent to £1,618,197 in 2016). Yeoman died in the same quarter of 1901 as their eldest son John Yeoman and their third son, Yeoman Dean Aldwinckle; the young men were aged nineteen and sixteen respectively.

John Yeoman Aldwinckle served in the Boer War as a trooper in the Cape Mounted Rifles. He died at Pietermaritzburg on 28th April 1901 from wounds received while fighting with the Natal Police Field Force at Mahlabathini. In this action twenty seven British troops beat off four hundred Boers after fighting for five and a half hours. He is commemorated on the Mahlabathini police memorial in Eastern Transvaal, in Shippon church and in Framlingham College chapel. His death was noted in the Grantham Journal in June.

The second son Percy took over the running of the Shippon Manor farm in the 1900s. Henry meanwhile was a pupil at Framlingham College where he joined the army cadet force. In 1911 he was studying farm management at Greatworth Manor in Barholm, a village a few miles to the east of Stamford, and had joined the Lincolnshire Yeomanry. He served as a territorial for six years, transferring on 5th August 1914 from the 1/1st to1/ 2nd. Both were moved to Norfolk that autumn.

Henry’s wartime military career was curtailed by illness. He was discharged on 1st December 1915 at Old Catton, Norwich having been hospitalised at Diss four times between February and July of that year. He had been on sick leave since 31st July.

In March 1930 a farmer named Harry Aldwinckle with an 1890 birth date emigrated to St. John’s, New Brunswick in Canada. He must surely have been the Henry of the Shippon Manor family as the cemetery in the Ontario township of Stanley contains burials of several Aldwinckles including one named Yeoman.

Henry’s brothers Percy Aldwinckle and Bernard Aldwinckle also served; Bernard died in 1918. Their mother Helen died in1924 in Bristol Royal Infirmary, having moved to Somerset with her unmarried daughter Helen Mary.

For an account of the historic extended Aldwinckle family see John Bartholomew Aldwinckle. The following list gives the names of all known servicemen who were descended from Aldwinckles living Cottingham and Middleton in the nineteenth century.

(I also have information on a further five servicemen descended from the Aldwinckle family of Drayton in Leicestershire whose ancestors moved there from Cottingham in the eighteenth century. They are Ernest Aldwinckle, George Harry Aldwinckle, William Harold Aldwinckle, Herbert Aldwinckle and William James Aldwinckle. Please contact me <cottinghamsoldiers@gmail.com> if you would like to know more.)

Servicemen descended from Thomas Aldwinckle (1816-1899):
William Augustus Aldwinckle, Ralph Aldwinckle and Ernest Henry Aldwinckle.

Servicemen descended from Henry Aldwinckle (1770-1842):
John Bartholomew Aldwinckle, Charles Henry Aldwinckle, Arthur Edwin Aldwinckle, Frederick Wade Coles, Albert Edward Aldwinckle, Archibald Aldwinckle, Frank Aldwinckle, Harry Aldwinckle, William John Aldwinckle,  Harry Aldwinckle, George Robert Aldwinckle, Thomas Aldwinckle and Walter Aldwinckle.

Servicemen descended from William Aldwinckle (1807-1891):
Bartle Essex Aldwinckle, Charles Reginald Burdett, Alfred Norman Burdett and William Edward Burdett.

Servicemen descended from John Aldwinckle (1817-1884):
John Aldwinckle, Percy Aldwinckle, Henry Aldwinckle and Bernard Aldwinckle.