Charles Alan YOUNG (1892–1917)
Charles Alan Young (known as Alan) was born at 1 Church Terrace, Roath, Cardiff in 1892 and baptised at St Margaret's Church there on 7 December. He was the only son of Charles Alfred Young (born in South Shields, Durham in 1862) and Maria Burrell Putt, known as May, who was born in Brixham, Devon on 7 September 1866, the daughter of the shop-owner Robert Putt.
Alan's parents were married in the Portsea Island district of Hampshire in the third quarter of 1888. They had two children:
- (Charles) Alan Young (born in Cardiff in 1892, reg. fourth quarter)
- Margaret Ursula Young (born in St Andrew’s, Dinas Powys, Glamorgan on 6 March 1899).
At the time of the 1891 census Alan’s parents were boarding at 222 Newport Road, Roath, Cardiff, and his father was working as a ship store merchant or shipbroker. Alan, their first child, was born the following year.
Alan's father Charles Alfred Young died in Cardiff at the age of 38 in the second quarter of 1900, when Charles was aged seven and his sister was one.
At the time of the 1901 census Alan (8) was living at 16 Cwt-y-fil Road, Penarth with his widowed mother Maria (34), recorded as May, and his sister Margaret (2), plus a servant.
In 1911 Alan (18) was a fitter’s apprentice, living at the same address with his mother Maria (44) and his sister Margaret (12), who was at school. They no longer had a servant.
It must have been in Penarth that Alan’s mother met Herbert Field (born in Wallingford in 1855/6). At the time of the 1911 census Herbert (a widower of 55) was working as a schoolmaster and living in Penarth with his two children Esther Mary Field (13) and James Charles Burstal Field (7), as well as his Oxfordshire-born niece, who kept house for him.
On 17 January 1912 at All Saints' Church, Penarth, Glamorgan, Alan's mother Maria Burrell Young, who was living at Cwrt-y-vil Road, Penarth, married her second husband Herbert Field of Archer Road, Penarth.
Alan was serving his articles to engineering at the Mountstuart Dry Docks Ltd at Cardiff when war broke out.
Around the beginning of the First World War Alan’s mother and stepfather, Herbert Field, who had now retired from being a schoolmaster, moved to Old Headington.
They lived at Church House, 14 St Andrew’s Road (left), presumably with the children from both marriages.
Alan Young enlisted for service In the First World War in August 1914. He served in Salonika in the “D” Battery of the 256th Brigade of the Royal Field Artillery and on 10 June 1918 he was gazetted Second Lieutenant. He then served in France for just two months before he was killed by a shell at the age of 25 on 14 October 1918.
He was buried near Cambrai in the Ramillies British Cemetery (D.22), and his war grave there has the added words “GREATER LOVE HATH NO MAN”. (Only 40% of war headstones bear an inscription such as this near their base: the main inscription was free, but families had to pay 3½d per letter for a personal message.)
His will was proved on 9 May 1919. and his effects came to £178 16s. 7d.
He is remembered on the roll of honour of St Andrew’s Church in Old Headington and on three war memorials in Penarth: at All Saints Church, at St Augustine's Church, and on the Penarth war Memorial in Alexandra Park. There is no physical war memorial in Roath, where he also lived, but he is included on this virtual war memorial
Postscript
Alan’s stepfather and mother
- Herbert Field died at Church House at the age of 63 and was buried at Headington Cemetery on 8 February 1919.
- Mrs Maria Burrell Field can be seen living at Church House in the 1921 census with her daughter Margaret and their servant, and she remained there until 1925. At the time of the 1939 Register she was living with Rhoda and Alice Veysey at 13 New Road in Brixham, Devon. She outlived her daughter, and died at the age of 81 at The Loans in Shillingford (then in Berkshire), on 10 July 1948 and was buried at St Laurence's Church, Warborough. Her effects came to £1,015 17s. 6d.
Alan’s sister
- Margaret Ursula Young was still living with her mother at Church House, Headington when on 12 June 1923 at St Andrew's Church she married Geoffrey Simpson Field, a solicitor from Reading. (Her husband was the son of Charles Gyningham Field, who was born in Wallingford in 1850 and may have been connected to Margaret's stepfather Herbert Field, born there in 1855/6). Margaret Ursula Field was living at 27 The Mount, Caversham, near Reading when she died at the Greenlands Nursing Home in Reading at the age of 45 in 1943. Her husband Geoffrey Simpson Field, who served as a Lieutenant Colonel during the Second World War, was sill at that address when he died at the Royal Berkshire Hospital on 2 September 1956.