Long and Lazy Lewisham – part 4A: outside 45 High Street by the Quaggy
At the end of March 1915, a new building appeared on Lewisham High Street, outside Chiesmans department store. Just visible on the right of the photo above, it was a red-and-white recruiting tent, erected by Chiesmans to help find more men for the 20th (Blackheath and Woolwich) Battalion of the London Regiment, one of the local army units fighting in the Great War. Soon afterwards, it was joined by a red, white and blue recruiting hut built for the newly-formed Lewisham Battalion of the Royal West Kent Regiment.
Over two posts, we’ll follow story of these two recruiting campaigns and their temporary occupation of part of the High Street. Before we start with the 20th Londons, a little bit of background.
Recruiting Britain’s Great War army
It has been said (possibly by Professor Richard Holmes) that Britain’s Army in the Great War was made up of something old, the small but highly-trained Regular Army (and ex-servicemen as reservists); something new, with conscription applied across Great Britain (but not Ireland) from 1916; something borrowed, with the home-defence Territorial Force co-opted for service overseas; and something blue, Kitchener’s ‘New Armies’ formed from 1914 and dressed temporarily in post-office blue due to supply problems.
Men from Lewisham went to war through all four routes. The story in this pair of blog post is about the latter two: this time the local Territorial Force (TF) unit and next tie the ‘Service’ battalion formed in the Borough in 1915.
Most regiments in 1914 contained Territorial Force units made up of part-time soldiers who trained in the evenings and weekends and in annual camps, alongside their regular battalions. The TF had been formed in 1908 specifically for home defence (against the backdrop of invasion scares and literature including Riddle of the Sands). Unusually the London Regiment didn’t have regular battalions but was entirely “territorial”, and its 20th Battalion was the Blackheath and Woolwich Battalion, based at Holly Hedge House on Blackheath. Meanwhile, the Royal West Kent Regiment had Territorial Battalions based in Tonbridge (the 4th Battalion) and Bromley (5th).
Recruitment in 1914 and early 1915
In the first months of the war, two big changes took place: the first was a rush of new recruits to the army, including the TF, which had the added benefit that men could serve with men from their local area. Second, the men in the TF battalions signed up in large numbers for ‘Imperial Service’ – that is to serve overseas. Those who did were able to show their willingness to serve overseas by wearing the ‘imperial service’ badge.
Not all did sign up for imperial service – indeed, for some men, being able to join up for home defence only may have sweetened the pill of military service. Enough did so, however, that most TF units were able to split into ‘1st line’ units that were willing to serve overseas and ‘2nd line’ units made up of home service men, those under-age for foreign service (i.e. under 19) and new recruits who were not yet trained to go overseas. The clunky nomenclature made these the 1/20th and 2/20th Battalions in the case of the Blackheath and Woolwich unit. The same thing happened with the local territorial artillery unit, the 4th London (Howitzer) Brigade, based at Ennersdale Road, forming first- and second-line units in 1914.
This expansion of the Territorial Force was eclipsed, at least in the public eye, by the raising of the new ‘Service’ battalions – including the the famous ‘Pals’ units. These were extra battalions within exiting regiments (other than the all-TF ones like the London Regiment), often raised by local authorities, wealthy individuals or other organisations. Among them, many had a geographical or other theme to them which was often included in their titles – the Footballers’ Battalions (17th & 23rd Middlesex), the Leeds Pals (15th West Yorkshires) – or like the 10th Royal Fusiliers, could have an unofficial title: the Stockbrokers’ battalion. The West Kents raised a ‘Service’ battalion in August 1914, two in September, and another in October 1914 – their 6th, 7th and 8th battalions, although none had a catchy title (and all were formed in Maidstone).
By Spring 1915, the rate of recruitment was falling to worrying levels. February saw monthly recruitment across the UK fall below 100,000 men for the first time (after a peak of nearly 463,000 in September 1914). Having relied to a great extent on local campaigns in the autumn of 1914, the national recruitment campaign really geared up through 1915. Most of the posters produced by the Parliamentary Recruiting Committee (PRC), and particularly the most famous ones, were produced in 1915 as the government and others attempted to revive flagging recruiting numbers.
The 3/20th Londons campaign and the tent by the Quaggy
This concerted national effort did not mean the end of local campaigns, however, particularly where campaigns centred around local units. At the end of March – in the midst of a PRC campaign – Major Assheton Pownall of the 2/20th London Regiment was tasked with raising a third-line (or “second reserve”) battalion. Pownall had a strong local link, having represented Lewisham on the London County Council before the war. He declared his aim as finding 800 men before the PRC campaign ended: 300 to join the 2/20th and another 500 for the new 3/20th Battalion. (LBN 2 & 9/4/15)
As part of this campaign, Chiesman Brothers erected the red and white striped tent outside “Paris House”, their large store on Lewisham High Street, which by then had spread out across Granville Road (now Granville Grove) to occupy the buildings up the St Stephen’s church. On 31 March, they handed the tent over the 20th Londons.
The tent appears from the photo to have stood outside number 45 Lewisham High Street, at the end of Granville Road, which had only recently been acquired by Chiesmans, having been a school for many years. This was right in the middle of Chiesmans’ frontage, next to the river Quaggy – today it would be in the middle of the front of the police station (more of the river is now covered, but then the uncovered section when up to Granville Road).
With the tent in place and an office at Lewisham Town Hall in Catford, the 20th Londons reportedly had 54 recruits in their first week of the new campaign, compared with ten the previous week (LBN, 2 and 9/4/15)
At this point, Pownall was sent to carry out a wider campaign across London and Lieuenant Guy Cooper-Willis, a solicitor’s clerk who lived in Blackheath, took over the 3/20th Londons campaign in and around Lewisham. When he left, Pownall reported that they had recruited over 230 men in the previous two weeks. (LBN, 16/4/15)
A week later, we are told that a total 430 men had joined the unit. The Lewisham Borough News reported that Cooper-Willis had
“a particularly enterprising and energetic staff at the recruiting tent in Lewisham High Street. Here good use is being made of the trees and railings near the River Quaggy to remind able-bodied men of their country’s need and their personal duty.”
LBN, 23/4/15
We can see the evidence of that activity in the photo, with a banner in the trees pointing people to the recruiting office, a lot of recruiting posters attached to the railings and uniformed men on the pavement:
The local paper also carried a photo of the team. They were led by Sergeant Henry Francis Trevillion from New Cross, and posed together in front of the recruiting tent. The caption stated that 140 men had been “captured” there so far, out of “about 450” who had come forward during the campaign – so about a third had joined via the red-and-white tent.
One notable these recruiters (about whom there is more below) was that the two officers, Sgt Trevillion and the men in his team were all local to this part of South-East London. Presumably this both reflected the local character of the 20th London, but also perhaps an awareness that local knowledge would help to connect with other local men.
As well as being out in the streets and manning the red and white tent, the recruiters also held public meetings, including one in mid-April when Cooper-Willis spoke at Whitfield’s Mount on Blackheath (an old rallying point, which is the subject of a Running Past blog).
A week later Cooper-Willis criticised statements made in Parliament that he felt were undermining his efforts: their suggestion that conscription would not be needed apparently reduced the pressure on civilian men and fewer came forward to join up – only four that Monday compared with 64 the previous Monday. He made these remarks at a recruiting meeting in the Town Hall that also received a suggestion from Lord Kitchener of a new local unit for Lewisham. The meeting felt that 4th London Howitzer Brigade and 20th Londons “had already recruited very largely from the local area”, but they did like the idea of a Lewisham Battalion in the Royal West Kent Regiment – of which we will hear much more in a later post. (LBN 30/4/15)
The main active campaign for recruits to the 3/20th London appears to have wound down in the first half of May, as the Lewisham Battalion campaign geared up. A letter to the LBN on 7 May from Colonel Pownall reported that there were 400 in the battalion, as well as 200 sent to the 2/20th – close to the aim he had set himself a month earlier. He also said that they were keeping open the tent outside Chiesmans, and another at New Cross railway station. A week later he told the meeting launching the Lewisham battalion campaign that they had averaged 100 recruits per week for six weeks (around 13 per day) and that “the tent at Messrs Chiesmans was the most successful of their recruiting stations”. (LBN, 14/5/15) A report later in the year also refers to another 20th London recruiting tent at Perry Vale, Forest Hill. (LBN, 10/9/15)
News of further enlistments to the unit continued through the summer, even while the borough was attempting to raise its own separate battalion. On 9 July we are told that there were now 900 men in the 3/20th, and a week later that the previous eight weeks (i.e. since mid-May) had seen another 551 men recruited – again around 13 per day. This report added the detail of where those men came from: Lee 35, Lewisham 68, Catford 37, Forest Hill 11, Brockley 36, Deptford 65, New Cross 40, Greenwich 90, Charlton 20, Blackheath 15, Millwall 44, other districts 90 – reflecting a local focus for the battalion, if one slightly wider than just Lewisham. (LBN, 9 and 16/7/15)
While thirteen men coming forward each day doesn’t sound like much it was apparently enough to fully man a new battalion and keep the recruiting authorities happy. The officers leading the campaign, Pownall and Cooper-Willis, must have been happy with these efforts – and with the praise they were given, Trevillion and his men at the tent on the High Street probably were too.
The next campaign – the Lewisham Battalion
As noted above, the 3/20th campaign largely wound up – at least as a high-profile local recruiting effort – in May, as the borough began to recruit for the Lewisham Battalion, the 11th Royal West Kents. This campaign went on for much of the rest of 1915 and will be the subject of a future blog post.
Men of the 3/20 Londons
To wind up this post, we have a bit of information about what the men who joined the 20th Londons did during the war, and about those who recruited for the battalion in Lewisham in 1915:
Where did the men recruited to the 3/20th Londons serve?
The 3/20th Londons went off for training under Colonel Pownall. In September 1915 a letter of his in the Hornsey and Finsbury Park Journal said, “I have a machine-gun section, signalling section, transport men, sanitary men, stretcher-bearers, military police, and all the other departments which conduce towards efficiency. As the whole unit is only some four months old, you will see we have not been idle.” (17/9/15). An official photographer visited them during their training:
The 3/20th did not, however, serve abroad as a unit. Instead they became the reserve unit of the 20th Londons – supplying men for the first- and second-line battalions.
The 1/20th went to France in March 1915 and fought in most of the major battles on the Western Front as part of the 2nd London Division, also known as the 47th Division. They quickly saw action, being involved in the battles of Aubers Ridge and Festubert, and in a major way on the first day of the Battle of Loos that September 1915 – which you can read an account of on my old blog here.
At Loos, they were among the units that captured German artillery pieces. In November 1915, guns captured in the battle were displayed on Horse Guards Parade in Westminster including two captured by the 20th Londons. On Saturday 29 November, the 20th Londons’ guns were paraded through Lewisham, passing down Loampit Vale to St Stephen’s Church where they was displayed in front of the church. This Pathe video on youtube shows the guns at the eastern end of Loampit Vale, between the River Ravensbourne and the church (the houses in the background were originally called ‘Shepherd’s Place’ and the Duke of Cambridge pub was immediately to the right of the shot here):
From there, the guns were taken to Catford and displayed on the pavement outside the Central Hall Picture Palace at the top of Bromley Road. Afterwards they were delivered to Holly Hedge House on Blackheath “where they will be preserved as a perpetual trophy of the gallantry of the local Territorial infantry.” (Sydenham, Forest Hill & Penge Gazette, 26/11/1915)
The 1/20th and the 47th Division remained in France and Flanders throughout the war, seeing further action at Vimy Ridge in May 1916, in the latter stages of the Battle of the Somme later that year, at Messines and Cambrai in 1917 and both the German Spring Offensive and the Allied advance in 1918.
The 2/20th were part of the snappily named 60th (2/2nd London) Division – the second-line version of the 47th Division. Their war service was summarised in a speech in April 1920 by Prince Albert (later King George VI) at Holly Hedge House:
[The battalion] embarked for France in June, 1916, and served in the Vimy Ridge trenches. Transferred to Salonica in December of the same year, it carried out an important raid in April, 1917. From there the Battalion went to Egypt, and took part in the Palestine offensive of the same year, capturing the war-supplies of Sheria, and fighting at Nebi Samwil. One company assisted in the assault which delivered Jerusalem. The Battalion was present again in the battles at Er Ram, Shah Salah, Arak Ibrahim, and in two raids east of Jordan. In July, 1918, the Battalion returned to France in time to take part in the final counter-offensive, fighting at Vraucourt, Havrincourt, Solesmes and Flesquieres, and eventually ended up as part of the Army of Occupation of Germany
Quoted in W.R. Elliot, The Second Twentieth, Being The History of the 2/20th Bn. London Regiment, p. 310
Captain Walter R. Elliott (from Blackheath), in his history of the Battalion (The Second Twentieth), quotes a Kentish Mercury account of the aftermath of the presentation of the King’s colours (one of the official flags of the unit) to the 2/20th Londons in April 1920 and unveiling of a memorial to the fallen of the 1/20th and 2/20th battalions. This was the occasion of the Duke of York’s speech quoted above. At a reunion dinner that evening, the veterans present took umbrage when they discovered that a German field gun captured by the 2/20th was being held behind closed doors at Greenwich council dustyard on Shooters Hill Road (having been sent to the council for display). A detachment of around 200 veterans assembled outside Greenwich Borough Hall at 10.30pm and marched to the dustyard, broke in and reclaimed the gun, “which was dragged back in triumph to Holly Hedge House, was was reached about midnight.”
Who were the recruiters?
Assheton Pownall (1877-1953)
Our first recruiter was Assheton Pownall. Before the war he was a Conservative councillor for Lewisham at the LCC and an officer in the West Kent Volunteers and their successors the 20th Battalion, London Regiment. After kicking off the campaign to raise the 3/20th Londons moved on to a wider London recruiting campaign, after which he returned to lead the 3/20th in their new role as the reserve battalion of the 20th and remained with them for the rest of the war. In the ‘Khaki election’ of 1918, he was elected (unopposed) for Lewisham East, a constituency he held until the sea-change election of 1945 when he was defeated by Herbert Morrison. According to his obituary in the LBN, as an MP he “acquired…an enviable reputation for judgment and alertness in financial matters”; accordingly, from 1942 was chair of the Public Accounts Committee. He also worked in the wine trade and was twice Master of the Vintners’ Company. (LBN, 3/11/1953)
Guy Cooper-Willis (1884-1957)
Guy Cooper-Willis (1884-1957)
When Pownall moved on to his wider recruits duties, he handed responsibility for the 3/20th Londons local campaign to Lt Cooper-Willis. The son of retired KC Edward Cooper Willis (author of “Willis on the bankruptcy law” and “Tales and legends in verse”), in 1911 27-year-ld Guy was living with his parents at 99 Shooters Hill Road, Blackheath, and working as clerk to a solicitor. He continued to work in the law, by the start of the war working in the Public Trustee Office, which acts as the trustee of the estate of a deceased person who has no executor.
In September 1914, he joined the Inns of Court Officer Training Corps and then, in November, became an officer in the 20th Londons. The Second Twentieth tells us that he was second-in-command of “C” Company in May 1915, after the “energetic recruiting campaign”. In September, he became the Brigade Bombing Officer (bombs meaning hand grenades in wartime British Army parlance). Back with the 2/20th, he arrived in France in June 1916 and served with them until being attached to Brigade staff again in December 1917. He was awarded the Military Cross in 1919 and married in December that year, by which time he was again a civil servant, having returned to the Public Trustee Office. His son Ewan Cooper Willis founded Portmeiron Pottery along with his wife Susan Williams-Ellis, who was the daughter of the Clough Williams-Ellis, creator of Portmeiron Village.
Henry Francis Trevillion
Sergeant H.F. Trevillion, who led the team at the recruiting tent, was a local man. He was born in Deptford in 1891 and in 1911 was living with his parents at 49 Billington Road, working as a travelling salesman for a printer’s firm. He appears to have served in the 20th Londons at some stage prior to the war as when, at the height of the recruiting boom on 3 September 1914, he went up to Holly Hedge House and joined up, they noted previous service with the unit. His potential was clearly recognised early after he joined up again as he was promoted to sergeant a month later.
After the recruiting campaign, he became a company quartermaster sergeant in September 1915. Joining 2/20th London at that rank in June 1916, he arrived in France with them that month and went on to Salonika in November. From January 1917 he was company accountant. In July 1917 he returned to the UK for officer training and in September he married Maud Fanny Francis in Kilburn. He was commissioned as an officer in the London Regiment in January 1918, but resigned in July due to ill-health and was given a pension for neurasthenia (a widely used term often synonymous with shell-shock).
In 1921 he was living at 24 Billington Road, near to his parents still at number 49; in the census he is recorded as an office manager for Reliance Rubber. By the 1930s, he was the sales manager for PB Cow and Co and was photographed visiting their rubber factory in 1932:
The other men photographed with Trevillion outside the red-and-white recruiting tent were:
AG Bailey – this appears to be Alan George Bailey, who went overseas with the 1/20th Londons in August 1915 and later served in the Machine Gun Corps. He was born in Bermondsey in 1895 and in 1911 was a tea merchant’s clerk, living with his parents in Rotherhithe. After the war he lived in Finsbury and in 1921 was a sales manager’s assistant for W Butcher and Sons, maker of cameras and magic lanterns, and in 1939 he was a sales manager, apparently for a company making rawl-plug-fitting devices, and living with his wife and family in Heston and Isleworth. He died in 1961.
TT Goldsack – Thomas Tindall Goldsack was born in Brockley in 1888 and in 1911 was living with his parents in Forest Hill. He was educated in Grays, Essex, and from 1904 worked for Waterlow and Sons currency printers. He joined the army at Blackheath on 2 September 1914. Like Bailey, he went to France in August 1915. Just over a month later, the battalion went into battle on the first day of the Battle of Loos and Private Goldsack was among their casualties on that first day. He is buried at Cabaret-Rouge Cemetery in Souchez. His photo and a brief biography were donated to the Imperial War Museum.
FN Harding – is likely to be Frederick Norman Harding. He went to France with the 2/20th in June 1916 and in August was promoted to Sergeant. He served there until November and then went with the battalion to Salonika until the summer of 1917. In 1918 he was discharged, apparently into Admiralty service as an engineer. It is likely that he is the Frederick Norman Harding who was born in 1894 in Lewisham and who in 1911 lived in St Austell Road, close to Blackheath and worked as an apprentice marine engineer. In 1933, he appears in a newspaper court report as a witness, referred to as an employee of Olby’s (presumably the firm on Lewisham High Street) (Bromley & West Kent Mercury, 26/5/1933). He lived in Bromley in 1939, and died in Croydon in 1977
H Davies – this appears to be Herbert Davies, who was later a Sergeant and then received a commission in the London Regiment in June 1918. Prior to his commission he served in France from June 1915 to November 1917. He lived at 104 Sandrock Road, Lewisham.
Long & Lazy Lewisham 