Aldershot – The Royal Garrison Church of All Saints

The Royal Garrison Church of All Saints was built in 1863 following the government’s 1857 decision to make Aldershot a permanent military camp. 

Church parade circa 1905 on the left (showing the 1st Dragoon Guards), and in 1908 on the right.  This short approach to the church…

…is now called Old Contemptibles Avenue, and was officially opened on 24th August 1958, the 44th anniversary of the Battle of Mons.

There was a time when surviving Old Contemptibles would march down here after the annual remembrance service (this photo taken in 1971).

Today, if you listen carefully,…

…maybe, maybe……

Thanks for the use of the Old Contemptibles’ photo, Andrew (there’s a link to Andrew’s excellent article about the Old Contemptibles Association at the end of the post).  Nicknamed ‘The Red Church’ for some obscure reason, the entrance is round the side, and the lady lounging in the doorway was warned she would be in this post, to give her an opt-out, which she heroically chose to ignore.  Hello!

Once inside, there’s quite a crowd for a Friday morning, and a few squaddies too, and all for a very good reason, although not one you might automatically assume, this being a couple of days prior to Remembrance Sunday.

Colours hang from the ceiling…

…and plaques adorn the walls, so we’ll take a look at the ones that I found of most interest (all images will enlarge), and along the way I might even explain why we’re here in the first place.  Or I might not.  I only photographed a few of these plaques along the north aisle, for reasons of personal interest, or lack of, but at the very end of the bottom ‘row’, farthest from the camera,…

…is this unassuming little tablet, and a reminder to people like me that the men referred to as ‘Old Contemptibles’ were the men who served from the day war was declared, 5th August 1914, to the day the First Battle of Ypres ended, 22nd November 1914 – and not, actually, all the men who served until the end of 1914, which is something I sometimes drift into believing.

On 4th August 1974, The Old Contemptibles’ Association held its last national parade here at All Saints, sixty years after the outbreak of the Great War.  This photograph shows the twelve surviving members of the City of Oxford branch before their trip to Aldershot for their final parade.

The 37th, 38th & 41st Dogras were infantry regiments of the British Indian Army, and, rather remarkably, it seems that only their British officers lost their lives during the Great  War……

Close to the entrance, also on the north aisle, there’s this fine Great War memorial to the men of the units that made up the 2nd Division, 1914-1918,…

…with, immediately beneath, the Roll of Honour for the officers & men of the 2nd Division who died during the Burma Campaign, December 1944 – May 1945 (above & below),…

Tell you what, we’ll head towards the altar, as it looks rather impressive, and very colourful, and on the way, obscured by the pillar on the left,…

…you might like to take a look at these three 19th Century plaques on the chancel wall next to the organ.

A waterfall of poppies…

…cascading down the steps,…

…the wooden panels, five on either side of the altar,…

…’In memory of the officers of the Royal Army Chaplains’ Department who gave their lives in the Great War 1914-1918′, the gold lettering beneath the names reading…

…’This memorial commemorates the chaplains of all churches’.

Earlier 20th Century photo looking towards the altar, the chancel still separated from the nave by a wooden rood screen festooned with shrubbery.  Note the very tattered colours hanging from the ceiling at this time; one hopes these ragtag remains, none of which are to be found in the church today, were removed and carefully stored.

Looking back down the nave, and as we are talking colours,…

…here’s a collection of flags of the Parachute Regiment that today hang from the roof,…

…including this exceedingly tatty Lancashire Battalion example with a number of battle honours including ‘Normandy Landing’.  Between them, the British 6th Airborne Division & the 1st Canadian Parachute Brigade suffered around eight hundred casualties on D-Day, of whom approximately three hundred were killed.

Canadian flag & White Ensign.

What you are actually looking at here is a queue.  And all these folk sitting patiently in the pews are queueing for whatever those that have already queued for are now looking at in the background.  I’m supposed to be among this lot too, but if I was, you wouldn’t get to see any of these pictures, would you, and I’m long past the point where I care one jot about wandering about, with or without camera, frankly, in front of large groups of people who, I presume, often wonder what on earth I am up to, or, like this lot, couldn’t care less.

Memorial plaque to Captain Mervyn Crawshay, 5th (Princess Charlotte of Wales’s) Dragoon Guards (pictured below), killed on 1st October 1914 at Wytschaete at the north of the Messines Ridge, aged 33.  Originally the highest-ranked officer of the 5th Dragoon Guards named on the Menin Gate Memorial (above right), the added red writing tells us ‘Known to be buried in Cement House Cemetery, Langemarck, Belgium’.

Crawshay’s body was not discovered until 1970 – and indeed not reburied until August 1978 – along with another, unidentified, man of the 5th Dragoon Guards, with whom he still shares a grave in Cement House Cemetery.

You can see Crawshay’s plaque to the right of the right-hand pillar in this shot as we look across the church towards the south aisle; the same pillar obscures another Roll of Honour,…

…to all ranks of the 5th (Princess Charlotte of Wales’s) Dragoon Guards who died during the campaigns in Egypt & the Sudan (Soudan) between 1882 & 1885.

The most recent Roll of Honour I found inside the church is to the men of 11 Light Brigade who were deployed to Afghanistan between October 2009 & April 2010.  Six months, during which they lost sixty four dead – including two Riflemen Peter Aldridges.

Memorials to a IXth Lancers captain (left) who died in Dehli on Christmas Day 1876 (left), and a XIIIth Hussars captain who died as a result of an accident in Madras earlier the same year (right).

13th Hussars Great War Roll of Honour.  Particularly dark, as you can see, it really needs its own little light shining down on it from above,…

…but you’re going to have to settle for these horribly underexposed images…

…to have much chance of reading the names.  Better than nowt.

Another 13th Hussars Roll of Honour, this time N.C.Os & men only, for those who died in South Africa between 1899 & 1902.

An open doorway, and in the porch,…

…a cross from the battlefield.

This cross was once placed at High Wood on the Somme, and remembers the officers, N.C.Os & men of the 1st Division who were killed in action in the area,…

…the accompanying drawing showing its original placement amidst the wreckage of battle.

The peacetime homes of the 1st & 2nd Divisions, whose Great War Roll of Honour we saw earlier, were both at Aldershot, which explains why this recovered cross now stands here at the Garrison Church.

Back inside, a Boer War memorial to the officers, N.C.Os & men of the Ninth Queen’s Royal Lancers.

The upper of these two plaques remembers one T. G. Oakes C.B., who joined the 12th Royal Lancers in 1846 as a cornet at the age of eighteen, served the regiment for twenty five years (including ten in command) during which time he achieved the rank of major general, and who died in 1878, still only 51 years old.  The lower plaque remembers Lieutenant Robert Septimus Grenfell, also 12th Royal Lancers, killed in action at Omdurman in the Sudan on 4th October 1898, aged 23.

And we appear to be nearly there,…

…wherever there actually is.

Roll of Honour for the IXth Queen’s Royal Lancers in Afghanistan between 1878-1880 with, at the bottom,…

…two captains killed in South Africa in 1879 in the year prior to the first Boer War.

10th Royal Hussars Roll of Honour, Afghanistan 1878-1879 (close up below).  The window is mentioned on the plaque.

10th Royal Hussars Roll of Honour, Sudan 1884.

10th Royal Hussars Roll of Honour, South Africa 1899-1902.

XIIth Royal Lancers Roll of Honour, South Africa, 1899-1902.  This is the first roll I have ever encountered that includes the name A. Hurry.  My Grandpa was a different A. Hurry, and although the piece of shrapnel that searched him out in 1916 ended his time on the Somme, it failed to end his war, nor did it see his name listed alongside hundreds of thousands of others on a Roll of Honour such as this.

IVth The Queen’s Own Hussars Roll of Honour, India, 1867-1878,…

…and a close-up of the regimental emblem at the top.

Beneath this magnificent stained-glass window,…

…there’s this impressive memorial to the memory of Lieutenant General The Hon. Sir James Yorke Scarlett G.C.B., Commander of the Legion of Honour & Colonel of the 5th Dragoon Guards.  Scarlett commanded the Heavy Brigade at Balaclava on 25th October 1854.

The small brass plaque above Scarlett’s head remembers General Sir John Pennefather G.C.B. Col. 22nd Regiment & Governor of Chelsea Hospital who died in 1872 aged 73.

It’d probably be more impressive if you could see the whole thing, but you can’t.  The plaques closest to the camera, beginning with the larger of the two,…

…are the 17th Duke of Cambridge’s Own Lancers Roll of Honour, South Africa, 1899-1902,…

…and the 17th Duke of Cambridge’s Own Lancers Officers & N.C.Os Roll of Honour, Ireland, 1920-1922,…

…alongside of which there is also this 17th Duke of Cambridge’s Own Lancers Great War Roll of Honour.

In the corner, this is the 17th/21st Lancers Second World War Roll of Honour.  The small plaque on the left…

…is yet another 17th Duke of Cambridge’s Own Lancers Roll of Honour, remembering the officers & men who died in Zululand in 1879.

Around another corner, and these names, beginning in 1924, are those of Queen Alexandra’s Imperial Military Nursing Service (R.R.C. refers to Royal Red Cross), established in 1902 to replace the Army Nursing Service.

In 1949, when Queen Alexandra’s Imperial Military Nursing Service was made a corps in the British Army, it was renamed Queen Alexandra’s Royal Army Nursing Corps, and thus Q.A.I.M.N.S. became Q.A.R.A.N.C..  Don’t you just love acronyms?  Me neither.

Earlier, maybe the earliest, Q.A.I.M.N.S. Roll of Honour.

19th Princess of Wales’s Own Hussars Roll of Honour, Egypt, 1882-1886.

Q.A.I.M.N.S. Second World War Roll of Honour 1939-1945, with members of the Territorial Army Nursing Service listed at the bottom.

Q.A.I.M.N.S. Great War Roll of Honour 1914-1919.

The two words at the bottom say ‘Bronkhorst  Spruit’, and much of this tablet is dedicated to the men of the 94th Regiment who were unfortunate enough to encounter a Boer detachment a few days before Christmas 1880.

On 20th December 1880 Lieutenant-Colonel Philip Anstruther and 260 men of the 94th Regiment were stopped at Bronkhorstspruit by a force of some two hundred Boers while marching from Lydenburg towards Pretoria.  Ordered to turn back, and that any further advance into what was now regarded as Boer territory would be seen as an act of war, Anstruther refused and ordered ammunition to be distributed.  The Boers opened fire, and fifty six men of the 94th would die, with over a hundred wounded, before a mortally wounded Anstruther ordered his troops to surrender.  The inset shows released prisoners and wounded of the 94th Regiment who survived the battle.

Anstruther and three of his officers are named on this memorial, which also remembers 238 N.C.Os & men killed at Bronkhorstspruit and during other South African campaigns around the same time, and, at the bottom, three captains, one who died whilst on special service in Egypt (he was a spy, wasn’t he?), one who was ‘treacherously murdered by the Boers’, and one who was killed by a leopard.

Three more memorials to see along this wall before we find ourselves back at the church entrance, the small plaque closest to the camera,…

…remembering three men of the 19th Royal Hussars who drowned at Aldershot on 4th June 1912, the first two trying to save the third.

The large plaque beneath the window remembers Colonel Percy Harry Stanley Barrow C.B. C.M.G., and you can read for yourselves the cause of his unfortunate demise.  The small tablet at the bottom dedicates the window itself to Barrow, Colonel Commanding the 19th Princess of Wales’s Own Hussars ‘in the march across the Bayuda Desert for the relief of Khartoum in January and February 1885’.

The final plaque I photographed, this 19th Queen Alexandra’s Own Royal Hussars Great War Roll of Honour is to the immediate left of the church entrance.

And finally, an image of a helmet on a beach.  And as I have failed to do so thus far, you may now be expecting me to explain what this is all about, and indeed the point of turning up at the church in the first place.

Well, I’m sorry, but there isn’t time.

However, for those of you who still have no idea what is going on, never fear, there’ll be a Part Two soon, when all will be revealed.  Andrew’s excellent article on the Old Contemptibles Association, ‘In Search of the Chums: The Surviving Legacy of The Old Contemptibles’ Association’, can be found here.