Castle Street, High Wycombe (picture from SWOP website)
Harry Walter Radcliffe's memorial, High Wycombe Cemetery
Harry Walter Radcliffe 1886- 1918
My name is Harry Walter Radcliffe and I was born in 1886 in Ealing. My father, Walter, married my mother, Emma Elizabeth nee Pierce, in 1885 in the Wycombe Reg Dist. I had a twin brother, Edmund Pierce Radcliffe but sadly he didn’t survive and neither did my poor mother. So I had a difficult start in life and went to live with my mother’s family – my grandmother Emma Elizabeth Pierce, who was a widow, plus a servant and a nurse. My grandmother had been born in Wycombe and she was then living at 10 Castle Street. Her husband, my grandfather Edmund Pierce, had been a timber merchant but he died in 1882, four years before my birth. Fortunately my grandmother had been left well provided for. Sadly she died aged 75 in August 1909 but lived to see me get married.
I married Margaret Hale Gardiner in 1907. Margaret had been born in Chelmsford, Essex, but by 1911 we were living at Weircoombe Cottage, Holywell, Eastbourne, along with Margaret’s sister and a servant. I was living on my own means by this time.
During the Great War I became a Lieutenant in the Royal Naval Reserve, service number 3/3272, but died in England on the 28th October 1918, aged 32, and was buried in Tavistock, Devon. This is where my wife was living at the time, at Down House. I left my dearest Margaret £8,587 16s in my will. I was to be remembered in High Wycombe, though, as I have a memorial inscription on my Pierce grandparents' headstone in High Wycombe Cemetery.
Researched by Margaret Anderton, Flackwell Local Area History Group and Sally Scagell, Lost the Plot
