The Royal British Legion
Staple Branch
Charity Number 219279
Cecil J Holness
Died on 1st September 1915 Aged 25
6th Battalion, The Buffs
Cecil was born in Shatterling in 1891. He came from a long line of farmers - not farm labourers - with a substantial acreage and his father was 30 when he married Cecil's mother who was the village schoolmistress. So, Cecil grew up in a well-educated, well to do family.
By 1911 he was married with a baby daughter, living in Durlock Road and working as Coal Pit Sinker.
We know that, by 1910, coal mining was becoming the big thing in the locality and test pits were being sunk in many locations, including in Wingham. Coal pit sinking was skilled and highly dangerous work, but comparatively well paid. The pit in Wingham closed in 1914 and Cecil joined up in Preston in August 1914 as war broke out, enlisting in the local regiment, 6th Battalion, The Buffs.
His unit arrived in France in June 1915 as part of the First New Army and by the 1st of September Cecil, with his Battalion, was at Despierre Farm, near Ploegstreet Wood when, in an exchange of artillery fire, a shell hit a dugout killing three men, one of them Cecil. All three are buried at Calvaire Military Cemetery, just down the road from where they died.
