Now that’s a cute little church if ever I saw one.
And a nice lych gate, too,…
…inside of which there’s a self-explanatory tablet – a little reminder of history already long forgotten.
Towards the western edge of the churchyard extension…
…there’s a war memorial,…
…the inscription on the front panel…
…remembering the men from the parish killed during the Great War.
This panel lists the Great War dead, with some additions (including two men buried in the cemetery) at the bottom,…
…with the panel on the opposite side continuing the names,…
…and the panel on the reverse listing four more Great War additions at the top, one of whom is buried in the cemetery, and the Second World War casualties beneath.
Hound church is no more than half a mile due south of Netley Military Cemetery, where we visited, over no less than six posts, last year, and this brief extract from the Salisbury & Winchester Journal published on 18th November 1865 explains the relationship between the two burial grounds.
A search of the graveyard reveals five CWGC headstones (all five names appear on the war memorial, two among the original list of names, and three, as we have already seen, among the addenda), the first a young aircraftman who died in December 1941,…
…the other four, two pictured here, all Great War casualties.
On the left in the previous shot, Lieutenant & Quartermaster Francis Soule, R.A.M.C., Mentioned in Despatches during the Boer War, had been retired for five years before being recalled on the outbreak of war in 1914. He served at the Royal Victoria Hospital at Netley throughout the war, and died there on 23rd November 1919 aged 54.
The other headstone is that of Private Thomas Henry Hargreaves, Auckland Regiment, N.Z.E.F., who died of wounds on 1st October 1919 aged 22, nearly a year after hostilities ended, and still such a long way from home.
With the two headstones we have just visited in the background, the grave in the foreground…
… is that of Private C. Michie, Army Service Corps, who died on 25th October 1918 aged 24.
G.R.R.F. for both Private Michie and the fourth Great War burial in the churchyard,…
…Petty Officer 1st Class Matthew Rosier, “H.M.S. Pembroke”*, Royal Navy, who died from disease on 18th January 1918 aged 48.
*actually the Royal Naval Barracks at Chatham in Kent.
Not an official CWGC headstone, this R.A.M.C. major died in 1961 aged 46. He presumably served throughout World War II, and at some point became a Member of the Order of the British Empire (or MBE, to thee & me).
