Ashtead War Memorials - WWI
Pte Ernest Seaman
2nd Bn Royal Fusiliers
At the end of 1880, Peter Seaman [born Ryburgh, Norfolk], Carpenter & Joiner, at the age of 53 having lost his first wife, married the widowed Sarah Wells [born Bury St Edmunds, Suffolk] and brought her to live with him at 2 Heath’s Cottages, The Common, Epsom. Each had had children already (Sarah’s younger being little more than a year old) but, by 1891, there were another three more mouths to feed including a son, Ernest [birth registered Epsom 9/1889]. Eight years after the arrival of another daughter, Peter died, aged 71, for his demise to be recorded at Epsom for the September Quarter 1900. Sarah continued to reside with her children on Epsom Common, in one of Maria Cottages, she and her eldest daughter joining a cohort of Laundresses in the area – Epsom Common, 1981, page 35.
In 1914, Ernest married Mabel Warwick [registered Wandsworth] for her to produce a daughter, Daphne [birth registered Epsom 12/1914]. The newly-weds took up residence at Ashtead in Hatch Gate Cottages, 1 or 2 Farm Lane.
Ernest Seaman (aged 25) of Hatch Gate, Ashtead, born Epsom, enlisted at Kingston on Thames on 18/1/15 and was assigned to Royal Fusiliers - not as recorded by CWGC in the 1st Battalion but in the 2nd Bn. This is evidenced in the record of the eventual award of a 1915 Star medal relating to service in the Balkans from 23 September 1915.
Having returned from service in India, the 2nd Battalion, Royal Fusiliers, re-embarked during March 1915 before joining in the landings at Gallipoli on 25 April 1915. Ernest avoided that carnage, seemingly having arrived as a reinforcement in the following September, before being evacuated with his unit to Egypt in January 1916; only to be sent on to France as part of 86th Brigade, 29th Division, the following March.
He would then have been caught up in the Battle of the Somme, particularly at Pont Remy, Albert & Transloy Ridge. On 16 August 1916 when he was killed in action the British had been engaged in an advance west and south west of Guillemont. Since the body was not recovered, his name appears on the Thiepval Memorial – “to the Missing”
Battle of the Somme chronology – www.ramsdale.org/timeline.htm
Ernest’s residence, with his parents, on Epsom Common, placed him in the parish of Christ Church to explain the appearance of his name on the War Memorial there.
http://www.epsomandewellhistoryexplorer.org.uk/WarMemorialsSurnamesS.html
text: Brian Bouchard assisted by Ann Williams: if you can
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page added 6 Mar 2009