| Description | Work completed by volunteer includes the following information:
Ernest Horton was born in Grimsby the 15 Feb 1899, the eldest of three children born to Edward and Agnes Horton. Edward was from Beverley and Agnes was from Castleford, West Riding. They married in Beverley in 1897 but soon moved to Grimsby where Edward worked as a rulleyman/carter. The family returned to Beverley and in 1911 were living at 24 Beaver Road. They later moved to 26 Holme Church Lane. By this time Edward was working as a labourer at the Beverley Shipyard on Grovehill. Little is known of Ernest’s early life but according to the Beverley Guardian of 3 May 1919 he was employed as a page at Moreton Hall, Congleton, Cheshire, in the employ of Mr Shackelly Hackers.
Ernest served as a private in the 25th (City of London) Cyclist Battalion, part of the Army Cyclist Corps. Their role was essentially that of reconnaissance and communications (such as message taking) but they were armed as infantry and could provide mobile firepower if needed. After August 1918 when the war in France became more mobile and the deadlock of trench warfare broken, the cyclists became invaluable in a reconnaissance role. Ernest was awarded the War and Victory Medals. Ernest served in the British Army on the Rhine, centred on the city of Cologne, entering German territory on 3 Dec 1918 to supervise the implementation of the Armistice.
After the war Ernest lived in the Lambeth area of South London. In the 1939 Register he is recorded as being a theatre attendant. At the end of 1926 he married Kathleen Mary Britten, born in Northamptonshire in 1903, the daughter of a domestic gardener. They had three children, Ernest born 1928, Joyce born 1931 and Janet born 1942 when they were living in Brentford, Middlesex. Ernest died, aged 91, in Wandsworth, south west London in 1990.
Includes photograph, information taken from census, military records, Commonwealth War Graves, newspapers |