| Description | Work completed by volunteer includes the following information:
George was born in Beverley on 28 Dec 1892 and baptised the following year at St Mary’s Church on 4 Feb. George was the eldest of five sons born to George Henry Grantham and his wife Sarah Elizabeth (nee Humphries).. George senior was a groom for the local hunt, later a coachman; by 1939 he was working at the local shipyard. George junior was brought up in Coombs’ yard (North Bar Within) and then on Union Rd (now Woodlands) and later at 2 Arnott’s Buildings in Well Lane. Little is known of his upbringing but he did spend a few months in the local Church Lads’ Brigade before being “dismissed for bad behaviour”. He served as a printer’s apprentice before qualifying as a printer himself.
Virtually nothing is known of George’s wartime military career. He served as a private in the 5th Battalion of the Yorkshire Regiment and his number (2490) indicates that he may have been a territorial before the war as so many men had been in Beverley. He served in France, probably after 1916 on the Somme and at Arras and in Flanders. At an unknown point he switched to the 9th Battalion of the Yorkshires who were in Italy November 1917 to September 1918. George may have been switched in 1918 after the 5th were in effect disbanded after a mauling in March 1918. There is no record of him having been injured. He was awarded the War and Victory Medals.
After the war on 26 Apr 1919 George was married at St Nicholas’ Church to Gladys Hill, born in Cottingham in 1896, a “bobbin doffer” according to the 1911 census, and daughter of a road labourer. They had four children, the first, Edna, born in the summer of 1920. The family later lived in the Patrington and Hornsea areas. In 1928 whilst working as an auxiliary postman George was convicted of theft and bound over for 12 months. In the 1939 Register he was recorded as being a cook at the Richmond army barracks in the North Riding. Gladys died in spring 1941. George remarried in Cambridge on 23 Dec1943. His new wife was Florence Bassett. He died aged 78 early in 1971.
Includes information taken from census, military records, Commonwealth War Graves, newspapers |