Lieutenant Edward Elliott, Royal Field Artillery
Died 25th October 1918, age 20
Edward was born 1898 in Kinson to Edwin Athelstan and Adeline Elliott. Edward’s father was a farmer and brick manufacturer who farmed extensively in the area around Kinson and was on the 1908 electoral register as owning land and a tenement in West Parley. He owned Cudnell Farm, Kinson, where he discovered a good brick clay and founded a successful pottery, Elliott’s Potteries at Bear Cross. The family sold the land in 1966 to Bournemouth Corporation & Max Factor Light Industries.
Edward joined the Royal Field Artillery, B Battery, 181st Brigade. It served as Divisional artillery with 40th Division, RFA and was sent to France in June 1916 but Edward did not join them until April 1917 when they then saw action during the retreat of the Germans to the Hindenburg Line, the capture of Fifteen Ravine, Villiers Plouich, La Vacquerie and Bourlon Wood. In 1918 they saw action in two more battles in the Somme before being sent to Flanders for two battles, suffering heavy losses. They were reorganised for the Final Advance in Flanders in July 1918 and the Battle of Ypres. Edward was wounded at Cambrai between 8th and 10th October and died on 25th October 1918 in a hospital in Surrey. He was buried in St Andrew’s Churchyard, Kinson.
He was awarded the Victory Medal and the British War Medal.
After the war Edwin Elliott and a Mr Osborne bought two wooden huts ex 1914/18 War and sited them on the corner of Kinson Road and Wimborne Road, where Lloyds TSB is situated today. They gave them to Kinson Social Club, who had lost their meeting place due to a fire, dedicating them to the memory of their sons lost in the war.
As well as on the West Parley Memorial, Edward is commemorated on a plaque inside Kinson Library and inside St Andrew’s church, Kinson.
Excerpts taken from Lesley Wilson’s book
They shall grow not old as we that are left grow old.
Age shall not weary them nor the years condemn.
At the going down of the sun and in the morning
We Will Remember Them