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Charles Alvara Lofthouse enlisted in East Riding of Yorkshire Imperial Yeomanry (Lancers) in 1905. He became a crack shot and, with the exception of 1909, won the Regimental Challenge Cup for shooting every year between 1907 and 1912. During the Great War he served with the 3rd/1st East Yorkshire Yeomanry, which was affiliated to the 5th Reserve Cavalry Regiment, primarily engaged on coastal defence duties. In Feb 1917 he was posted to the Curragh, County Kildare, Ireland. Then in early April his unit was absorbed into the 1st/1st East Riding Yeomanry, at that time serving in Palestine and shortly afterwards he embarked on HM Transport 'Arcadian'. The ship was carrying 1335 troops, reinforcements for Salonika, Palestine and Egypt. The 'Arcadian' was in the Aegean Sea en route to Alexandria when she was torpedoed and sunk by German Submarine UC-74 on Sunday, 15 Apr 1917 with the loss of 279 lives. Charles Lofthouse was one of eighteen East Yorkshire Yeomanry soldiers who drowned. He was forty-one years old.
Charles Alvara Lofthouse was born at Deighton in the parish of Escrick, the son of William Lofthouse, a farm worker, and his wife Mary (nee Rhodes). He was baptised in St Helen's Church, Escrick on 31 Oct 1875. He was the eldest of six children, having two brothers and three sisters. In 1891 when he was fifteen years old, Charles was working as a stable-lad-cum-groom and becoming a proficient horseman. By 1911 he was employed as a sawyer on the Escrick Park Estate of the 3rd Baron Wenlock.
On 1 Jan 1913, at the age of thirty-seven, Charles married Julie Dalton at St Mary's Church, Beverley, Julie was formerly an elementary school mistress at Escrick, and the daughter of Fred Barwick Dalton of Norwood Dale, Beverley. Charles and Julie Lofthouse had one child, Mabel, who was born the 16 Apr 1915, like her mother before her, Mabel also became a schoolteacher.
The name Charles Alvara Lofthouse is inscribed on the Mikra Memorial in Mikra British Cemetery, Kalamaria, Thessaloniki and on the St Helen's Church War Memorial, in his home village of Escrick and also on the East Riding of Yorkshire Yeomanry Memorial in the Soldiers' Chapel, Beverley Minster
Includes photograph, information taken from census, military records, Commonwealth War Graves, newspapers |