Charles Robert and Thomas Kipping





Oxford Rd and the junction with Brook St (picture from SWOP website) 		Charles Robert and Thomas Kipping memorial, High Wycombe Cemetery




Charles Robert and Thomas Kipping

1883-1918 and 1897-1921

`` Hello, my name is Charles Robert Kipping. I, and my younger brother Thomas, are remembered on the headstone of our parents’ grave here in Wycombe Cemetery, although neither of us is buried here. We are also remembered on the High Wycombe War Memorial at Wycombe Hospital. I was a casualty of the Great War and my brother Thomas was also classified as a Great War victim although he didn’t die until 1921.

We were the sons of Thomas Kipping and Roseanna nee Vernon who married in 1882 in the Registration District of Wycombe. Our father came from Wycombe but my mother came from Stokenchurch. He was a tailor by trade. My great grandfather, another Thomas Kipping, had once lived along Crendon Lane and his next door neighbours had been the Vernon family so I suspect that my parents may have got to know each other through family acquaintances. So my brother Thomas was named after our father and great grandfather and I was named after my grandfather and an uncle. We liked to keep our names in the family!

I was born on the 1st November 1883 but Thomas wasn’t born until the 7th August 1897 so I was a lot older than him. My parents had eleven children in total but not all of my siblings survived childhood so the loss of two more sons, in adulthood, must have been a severe blow to them. We lived in Brook Street and later in Bowderys Lane.

I became a chair maker and worked for Mr Tyzack in Slater Street. I married my wife Daisy Saunders in 1910. We went to live at 44, Gordon Road. Then the Great War began. On about the 11th or 13th October 1914 I joined the Territorials of the Bucks Battalion, Oxford and Bucks Light Infantry. I was part of the Bucks National Reserve Force number 2835. Later I was to become a Rifleman with the 21st (Midland) Battalion (Territorial), Rifle Brigade, number 203930, enlisting in Aylesbury. Daisy must have been lonely when I finally went to fight abroad but she had our two small children, Norman and Doris, to keep her busy.

For the last three years of my life I had been serving in Egypt and then went off to India and I died there in Hyderabad on the 27th October 1918. I wrote my last letter home on the 24th September and it arrived with Daisy on what would have been my 35th birthday. I had been unable to tell her where I was or where I was going to but I simply said I was ‘on the water’. I am buried in Fyzabad Cantonment Cemetery.

In 1925 Daisy married again and went to live in Middlesex. I hope she had a happy life.

I died three years before Thomas so I don't know much about his death. Like me, he joined the Bucks Battalion but then he transferred to the No1 Armoured Car Company Tanks Corps and his service number was 7871132. He was a Corporal, out in Basra, and is buried in the Basra War Cemetery, Iraq. So we are both buried a very long way from home and having a memorial to us on the family grave was one way of keeping our memory that much nearer to our loved ones here at home.







Researched by Margaret Anderton, Flackwell Local Area History Group and Sally Scagell, Lost The Plot

Back to map