Percy Aldwinckle

Name	Percy Aldwinckle
Corps	Household Cavalry, Cavalry of the Line, formerly Berkshire Yeomanry
Rank	Warrant Officer 2nd class
Service No.	318
Date/Place of entry	21 April 1915
Date of death	1932
Memorial/Grave

Percy Aldwinckle was born in 1883 at Burton Coggles, Somerby, a village a few miles south of Grantham. He was the second son of Yeoman Aldwinckle and his second wife Helen nee Worman. Yeoman was the only son of John Aldwinckle, a well-to-to Lincolnshire farmer of over four hundred acres who was born in Middleton.

Yeoman was himself a successful farmer. In 1871 at the age of twenty two he was running the farm at Burton Coggles and employing thirteen men and boys. His mother Mary was listed as head of the household and his cousin Amy Aldwinckle was visiting from Cottingham. At this time his father John was farming 460 acres in the hamlet of Uffington near Abingdon. Uffington is famously the site of the prehistoric white horse carved into the hillside some three thousand years ago.

Yeoman’s first wife died in 1879 four years after their marriage and he got married for a second time in 1881, to Helen Worman. The couple had six children at Burton Coggles then moved in the 1890s to Shippon Manor near Abingdon where Yeoman continued to farm until his death on 7 May 1901.  He left the considerable sum of £14,580 (equivalent to £1,618,197 in 2016).  Their eldest son John Yeoman had died on 28 April in Africa and the third son, Yeoman Dean Aldwinckle, also died in this quarter of the year; Yeoman was fifty one and the young men were aged nineteen and sixteen respectively.

John Yeoman Aldwinckle had been serving in the Boer War as a trooper in the Cape Mounted Rifles. He died at Pietermaritzburg on 28 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.

Percy took over the running of the Shippon Manor farm and joined the Berkshire Yeomanry in 1908. After war was declared yeomanry regiments became part of the British Army Reserve Territorial Force.  Second and third line regiments were formed and quickly absorbed into the Cavalry Reserve Regiments. Percy’s service record does not survive but Medal indices and his pension record indicate he served as Staff Sergeant Major with the Berkshires and Warrant Officer Class II in the Household Cavalry and Cavalry of the Line.

In August 1914 the Berkshire Yeomanry formed part of the 2nd South Midland Mounted Brigade which transferred the following month to the 2nd Mounted Division. In April 1915 they embarked for Egypt. Percy’s pension record is somewhat contradictory and states that he ‘disembarked’ on 21st April; should this be ‘embarked’? He definitely served abroad as he was awarded the relevant military medals.  He was discharged on 18 April 1916 at Reading.
Percy married twice. His first wife was Agnes Brown from Bothwell, Lanarkshire; her sister Margaret married his brother Bernard. Agnes died at Shippon Manor on 2 September 1917. His second wife was Dorothea Bowen whom he married on 6 September 1921. There were no children from either marriage and Percy died in 1932. In that year the Royal Air Force established a major airfield at Shippon, swallowing up several farms in the process. Perhaps the Manor was one of them.

His remaining two brothers Henry Aldwinckle and Bernard Aldwinckle also served. Bernard died from wounds in November 1918 and Henry seems to have emigrated to Canada in 1930. Their mother Helen died in 1924 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.