| Description | Work completed by volunteer includes the following information:
Leonard Gleadhill was born in Beverley the 9 Oct 1896 and baptised at Beverley Minster the 4 Nov 1896. His parents married in Beverley in 1882: Leonard’s father, James Henry Gleadhill was a chalk pit labourer; his mother was Elizabeth Hardy. They had six sons, only one of whom, Robert Edgar, born in 1889, did not serve in the army in WW1. The family lived at Grosvenor Place (off Cartwright Lane) in the 1890s and then at 13 Sloe Lane. Leonard is recorded in the 1911 census as a “printer’s errand boy”. He enlisted for the army early in the war in Manchester. He was unmarried.
Leonard served as a private in the 4th Manchester City Pals Battalion (the 19th Battalion of the Manchester Regiment) and arrived in France on 8 November 1915. He died 23 July 1916. On this day the 19th Manchesters were involved in an action on the Somme, 7 officers and 493 other ranks went missing, including Leonard. He was posted as missing in the Beverley Guardian of 12 Aug 1916, but was still only “presumed dead” at the end of the war. His body was never recovered and he is remembered on the Thiepval Memorial to the Missing on the Somme.
He was awarded the 1914-15 Star and the War and Victory medals. He is commemorated on the Hengate War Memorial and on the East Riding Memorial in Beverley Minster recorded as “L.E.Gledhill”.
Includes photograph, information taken from census, military records, Commonwealth War Graves, newspapers |