The Wycombe that Cecil would have known (picture from SWOP website)
Grave for Cecil Herbert Lee, High Wycombe Cemetery
Cecil Herbert Lee 1892 - 1950
Hello, my name is Cecil Herbert Lee. My father Percy Samuel Lee, married my Welsh born mother, Rosa Voisey, in June 1891 in the district of Brighton, Sussex. This is where I was born in 1892. My little sister Kate was born two years later. By the age of nine we had moved to Margate in Kent but, sadly, my mother was by then a widow and worked from home producing fancy needlework. Later she worked as an upholstress and Kate, when she grew up, became a ledger clerk. They remained in Margate but I had found employment as a draper's assistant in Richmond, Surrey.
During the Great War I did my bit for King and Country but was invalided out so, although I survived the conflict, I suffered ill health for the rest of my life. In 1925 I found happiness and married Ellen May (Nellie) Fisher in Bournemouth. By 1939 we were living in Slater Street, High Wycombe. I had found work as a caretaker for a motor company whilst Nellie took on the domestic duties at home. My mother was also living not far away. She was working as a housekeeper in Lucas Road for John Bloxbridge who was a chair and furniture manufacturer.
Unlike the rest of the Great War men buried or remembered in Wycombe Cemetery I lived until I was 58 and didn't die until 1950 but my wife and mother felt that my early death was almost certainly due to the results of war service in the First World War. They made sure that this was inscribed upon my headstone here in High Wycombe Cemetery - note 'after years of suffering' - so although I may not have been able to receive a Commonwealth War Grave for my contribution to the 1914-1918 war but my efforts were not forgotten. In 1956, six years after my death, Nellie married Clifford Holt in Wycombe and my mother died the following year, aged 87.
Researched by Margaret Anderton, Flackwell Local Area History Group and Sally Scagell, Lost the Plot.
