Lance-Corporal WILLIAM BENJAMIN POWNEY

33, Lower Stockbridge Road, Winchester (76, Stockbridge Road today)
Service number 5779. 1st Battalion, The Royal Berkshire Regiment
Died of wounds, France, 16 May 1915

Family Background

William Benjamin Powney was born in Salisbury in 1875, the second of the five children of Joseph and Mary Powney. Joseph, a boot retailer, was born in 1850 in Leicester. His wife had been born Mary Geary in London in 1846. The couple married at Lambeth, south London, in 1871.

In the 1881 Census the family were living at 36, Silver Street, Salisbury. The children included William, his elder brother Joseph, then aged eight, and two younger sisters, four-year-old Gertrude, and Florence, aged one. The family also employed a live-in domestic servant so were comparatively well-off.

William’s mother died in Salisbury in 1884, aged just 38, possibly while giving birth to a third daughter, Violet, who was born that year. Two years later Joseph remarried. His new wife, Elizabeth (née Hunt), had been born in Overton, near Basingstoke, in 1854.

By 1891 the Powneys were living at Brown Street, Salisbury, with Joseph listed in that year’s census as a shoe merchant. William, then 16, was an outfitter’s assistant. Joseph Powney died in 1897, aged 47, at which point the family shoe business seems to have been taken over by the elder son, Joseph Jnr, who went on to marry Eliza Sewell in 1898. In the 1898 Kelly’s Directory of Wiltshire, William was listed as a clothier, operating from 7, Minster Street, Salisbury. The previous entry in the directory is for his brother, Joseph Jnr, a boot and shoemaker at 36, Silver Street.

In 1899 William Powney enlisted in the Army in Reading, joining the 1st Battalion, The Royal Berkshire Regiment. It is likely that he knew Harold Forster, another of the Great War dead of Fulflood and Weeke, who joined the 1st Royal Berkshires the same year. (See Harold Forster's biography).

William cannot be found on the 1901 Census, probably because his battalion was stationed in Ireland at the time. His stepmother, meanwhile, had moved with his three sisters to 7, Minster Street, Salisbury, and was recorded as ‘living on own means’. On 5 September 1904, William’s siter Gertrude married Loftus Harvey and the couple went on to have a daughter, Agnes, born around 1909. In 1911 they were living in Sutton, Surrey.

By the time of the 1911 Census, William Powney had left the Army and was living with his stepmother Elizabeth and sisters Florence and Violet at 33, Lower Stockbridge Road, Winchester. He was working as a nurseryman. His brother Joseph was still running his shoe shop in Salisbury and living at 5, Moberly Road with wife Eliza and their three children, Dorothy (born 1899), Margaret (1903), and Joseph (1907). When the Great War broke out in August 1914, William Powney was 40 years old. He had probably joined the Army in 1899 for seven years with another five years in the Reserve. That period would have expired in 1911 so he was not compelled to re-enlist. However, William appears to have re-joined his old regiment as a volunteer, probably with his previous rank of Lance-Corporal.

Great War Record

Although the 1st Royal Berkshires arrived in France in August 1914, William did not join them until 9 February 1915. His first engagement was at the Battle of Festubert (15-25 May), part of a series of attacks by the British and French armies in the Second Battle of Artois (3 May-18 June 1915). William was wounded on 15 May when the 1st Royal Berkshires, as part of 6th Brigade in 2nd Division, attacked German positions along the Rue du Bois near the village of Richebourg. He died the following day, aged 40 or 41, one of more than 16,000 British casualties at Festubert.

Family after the Great War

Probate records confirm that William was living at 33, Lower Stockbridge Road (later renumbered as 76, Stockbridge Road) although they wrongly give his date of death as 10 May 1915. He left £226 16s 7d to his brother Joseph.

After the war, Joseph Powney continued to work in the shoe retail business. At some stage he, his wife Eliza and daughter Florence moved from Salisbury to Bournemouth where they were listed as living at 32, East Avenue in the 1939 National Register. Joseph died in Bournemouth in 1943, aged 76.

William’s middle sister, Florence, married in 1913. Violet, his youngest sister, continued to live at 76, Stockbridge Road, Winchester, where she died in 1949, aged 66.

Medals and Memorials for William Benjamin Powney

Lance-Corporal William Benjamin Powney was entitled to the 1914-15 Star, the British War Medal and the Victory Medal. He is buried at Bethune Town Cemetery, Pas de Calais, France (GR. III. C. 82) and the inscription on his headstone reads:

HE DIED THAT WE MIGHT LIVE

William is remembered on the memorials at St Matthew’s and St Paul’s churches, Winchester.

Researchers – DEREK WHITFIELD, CHERYL DAVIS and STEVE JARVIS