| Description | Work completed by volunteer includes the following information:
John Percival Tennison Ashbridge (known as "Percy") was born in Beverley in Apr 1891. He spent his early life in the town but had moved to Doncaster prior to enlisting in the West Yorkshire Regiment (The Prince Of Wales's Own). His parents married in 1877, his father, John Edward Needham Ashbridge was an agricultural labourer born in Catwick in 1857 and his mother, Elizabeth Ann Pinching, was born in 1855 in Norfolk. Percy had 5 siblings-Walter, Herbert, Charles, Lavinia and Kate.
The family had originally lived in Molescroft and later at 27 Lairgate and Hind's Yard in Keldgate. Percy's natural father died in 1894 and his mother remarried in 1897 to Mathew Henry Baildom, born in 1856 at Great Carlton in Lincolnshire, a shepherd and farm worker. They later moved to Harworth in north Nottinghamshire and then to Stancil near Doncaster. The family continued to be divided between Beverley and that area. Percy was employed in farming, latterly as a cow-man on a farm at Wawne.
Percy served as a private in the 9th Battalion and saw service in the Dardanelles He then served as a private in the 12th Battalion on the Western Front in France where he was killed in action on 14 Jul 1916. He is commemorated on the Thiepval Memorial on the Somme. He was awarded the 1914-15 Star and posthumously the Victory Medal and the British War Medal.
Two of his brothers also served in the army, Walter Ashbridge (1890-1968), living in Bawtry, Yorkshire, and employed as a horse-man, served as a private in the Machine Gun Corps whilst Herbert Ashbridge (1886-1937), latterly living in Wilbert Terrace, Beverley, and employed as a tanner's labourer, served as a private in the Home Service Battalion of the 5th Yorkshire Regiment
Includes photograph, information taken from census, military records, Commonwealth War Graves, newspapers |