2nd Lieutenant BASIL VOKES

41, Western Road, Winchester (12, Cheriton Road today)
1/4th Battalion, Oxfordshire & Buckinghamshire Light Infantry
Previously Corporal 4861, 28th Battalion, The London Regiment (Artists Rifles)
Killed in action, France, 15 February 1917

Life Summary

Basil Vokes was the son of stonemason James Vokes whose business on the Stockbridge Road was once a familiar landmark in Fulflood. Basil attended the Winchester Diocesan Training College for Teachers and later worked in Surrey. During the Great War, he enlisted with the famous Artists Rifles before joining the Oxfordshire & Buckinghamshire Light Infantry. He was killed on the Western Front in an artillery bombardment in 1917.

Family Background

Basil, the second son of James and Lavinia Vokes, was born in Winchester on 4 July 1883 and baptised on the 29th at St Matthew’s Church, Weeke. His father had been born in Winchester in 1851. Basil’s paternal grandfather was also called James but attempts to trace him have so far proved unsuccessful, mainly because Vokes is such a common name in Hampshire.

Basil’s mother was born Lavinia Draper in Chale, on the Isle of Wight, in 1854. She was the fourth of six children born to labourer Mark Draper and his wife Jane (née White). At the age of 16, Lavinia became a live-in housemaid to a landowner and former Captain in the Hampshire Militia at 4, City Road, Winchester. This, presumably, was when she met James Vokes.

James and Lavinia married in Chale on 8 January 1879. They moved to the newly-built 1, Greenhill Road in Fulflood where their first son, Harold, was born the following year.

In the 1881 Census James was recorded as a ‘Stonemason Journeyman’ – meaning that he was learning his trade. Also living in the house was a visitor, Claude de Neville, an ‘artist in fine arts’ who is believed to have been in Winchester to visit his fiancée Hannah Taylor. The couple went on to marry in Winchester later that year.

By the 1891 Census the Vokes’s house had been renumbered as 9, Greenhill Road (today it is No. 17). Basil’s father was a fully qualified stonemason while Basil himself and brother Harold were both at school. Although it is not known which primary school they attended, the National Schools Admissions Register shows Basil was admitted to St Thomas National Church of England Boys’ School in 1893. Years later, he would return there as a trainee teacher.

By 1901 the Vokes family were living at 3, Clifton Terrace, Winchester, a spacious home spread over five floors. Also living in the house were Lavinia’s widowed mother and Emily Kervell, a 21-year-old Londoner who was employed as a general domestic servant. Harold, aged 25, had qualified as a Post Office clerk and Basil was a pupil-teacher at St Thomas School.

Basil’s position as a pupil-teacher meant that he had shown promise in class and had been invited by his school to stay on beyond the normal leaving date. Pupil-teachers had to be at least 15 years old and be accepted by an Inspectorate. They also had to pass a medical and a written examination in reading and recitation, English, history, geography, arithmetic, algebra, Euclidean geometry and teaching.

Pupil-teachers were not permitted to work more than five hours a day and 20 hours in a week. They were examined annually by the Inspectorate and at the end of their period of service they usually sat a scholarship examination, with a 1st or 2nd class pass entitling the pupil to enter teacher training college. Basil duly passed the exam and in 1902, aged 19, he enrolled at Winchester Diocesan Training College, less than half a mile from his home in Clifton Terrace.

The year 1902 was also a landmark one for Basil’s father. An advertisement in the Hampshire Chronicle of 6 September 1902 reveals that James Vokes had gone into business as a stonemason in Fulflood. The firm, Vokes & Beck, carried out all types of stonework, but the advertisement makes special mention of tombs and headstones. Over the following century, Vokes & Beck would go on to become part of the fabric of life in Fulflood. The firm still operates today, but from premises in Kings Worthy.

As his father ventured into business, Basil Vokes began his three years of teacher training. Part of this involved visiting local schools and the college magazine of the period features an article written by Basil about his experiences at Mount Pleasant School, an exceptionally large primary in Newtown, Southampton. Basil also seems to have been involved in college sporting events – especially football and cricket – although usually as referee or umpire.

Among Basil’s contemporaries at teacher training college was Andrew Bogie who would later live in Winchester in St Paul’s Terrace (St Paul’s Hill today) and also become a master at St Thomas School. During the Great War he served with the 1/4th Battalion, The Hampshire Regiment and died after being captured by the Turks following the siege of Kut-al-Amara. Andrew is listed on the Fulflood and Weeke memorials and Andrew Bogie's biography is available.

It is possible that Basil, like Andrew Bogie, joined the college’s Volunteer Company, part of the Winchester-based Hampshire Regiment. In 1908, the Volunteer Company was transformed into ‘B’ Company of the 4th Territorial Battalion, The Hampshire Regiment.

In 1905 Basil took up his first teaching position at St James’s School, Weybridge, Surrey. However, the excitement of beginning his career would have been tempered by the news of his brother Harold’s death at the age of just 25. Three years later tragedy struck again when his mother Lavinia died at the age of 54 while visiting family in Chertsey, Surrey.

Besides his teaching duties, Basil enjoyed a busy social life in Weybridge. He sang with Weybridge Choral Society, joined the Freemasons, was elected secretary of the local bowling club and became Secretary of Weybridge Football Club and Honorary Secretary of the Emly Deanery Schools Football League. He also became an NCO in the local Volunteer Company (later reorganised into the Territorial Force).

Basil lodged with a Mrs Sumner at Fieldview, Springfield Meadow, until her death in 1911. He then boarded at 11, Minorca Road with Ellen Huband, headmistress of St James’s Girls’ School.

Back in Winchester, James Vokes had moved to 41, Western Road where his niece, 31-year-old Bertha Macklin, was the live-in housekeeper. Bertha was the daughter of Arthur Macklin and his wife Ellen, the sister of Lavinia Vokes. In the census James described himself as a ‘General Monumental and Stonemason’. Two years later, however, James died in Winchester, aged 61. His business partner, Mr Beck, continued to run the firm.

With his father’s death, Basil Vokes no longer had any living immediate relatives, although he appears to have remained close to the Macklin family. Intriguingly, the 1914 Warren’s Winchester Directory lists a ‘Mrs Vokes’ living at 41, Western Road. The identity of this person is a mystery as neither Basil nor Harold married and James Vokes did not remarry. It is possible, however, that Bertha Macklin titled herself Mrs Vokes to try to retain her lodgings.

Basil continued to teach at St James’s School after the Great War had started. Indeed, he waited for more than a year before enlisting in St Pancras, London, with the 28th (County of London) Battalion, The London Regiment (Artists Rifles) on 1 November 1915.

Great War Record

The Artists Rifles had been founded in 1860 by a group of painters, sculptors, architects, poets and actors who feared a possible French invasion of Britain. Early members included the pre-Raphaelites as well as William Morris and the poet Algernon Swinburne. During the early part of the Great War, artists such as Paul and John Nash, the poets Wilfred Owen and Edward Thomas and the playwright Noel Coward joined the Artists Rifles which, because of the calibre of its recruits, produced more than 10,000 officers for service in other regiments between 1914 and 1918.

Basil’s Army medical report reveals that he was 6ft tall, weighed 11 stone and had a 36in chest. He was promoted to Lance-Corporal on 24 November 1915 (probably because of his previous military experience) and then to Corporal on 24 March 1916. His movements over the next three months are uncertain, but he almost certainly did his officer training at Hare Hall Camp in Romford, Essex, where the Artists Rifles had their own Officer Training Corps (OTC). Here, he may have met Wilfred Owen who was completing his training around the same time.

In the 13 September 1916 edition of The London Gazette – the publication which recorded all commissioned officers’ postings and changes of regiment – there is a notice stating that Basil has been transferred from the Artists’ Rifles OTC to the Oxfordshire & Buckinghamshire Light Infantry (OBLI). Both were effective from 5 September.

Basil joined the 1/4th Battalion, OBLI (The Lightbobs as the regiment was known) on the Somme, near Courcelette, as the British offensive there was ending. He was assigned to ‘C’ Company and spent November and December 1916 in and out of the front line. Casualties were light by Great war standards, but the bitter winter of 1916-17 took a heavy toll on soldiers, with many suffering illness and frostbite.

Basil’s battalion spent January 1917 training at different camps, with route marches between. By 7 February, the 1/4th OBLI were back on the Somme at Herbecourt, ten miles south-east of Courcelette, and two days later they moved into the front line there.

The battalion’s war diary records how the men came under German artillery fire over the following days, with ‘C’ Company’s positions bearing the brunt of the bombardments. The diary entry for 15 February 1917, the day Basil was killed, reads:

Brigade Support 1500 yards east of Flaucourt. 9.30am Several hostile aeroplanes over, which were ‘strafed’ by our Lewis gun. 10.15am Shelling in neighbourhood of Battalion HQ commenced. This continued, without cessation, till 1pm, being particularly fierce for about the first three-quarters of an hour. Several hundred shells were fired … Several direct hits scored on dugouts occupied by Battalion HQ and C Company, also on a dump of French bombs on the road close by. Casualties: Killed 2Lt B. Vokes from a shell which burst just outside the entrance to C Company’s HQ and 1 OR [Other Rank].

Family after the Great War

In 1924, when Basil’s body was exhumed for reburial, he was found to have suffered extensive shrapnel wounds to the upper part of his body. Basil Vokes was 33 years old when he died. Although he was living in Weybridge when he enlisted, this study has chosen to give his address as 41, Western Road, Winchester, in recognition of the fact that his father was living there until 1913 and because of the Vokes family’s close ties to Fulflood. His name is not listed in the Winchester War Service Register.

 

Medals and Memorials for Basil Vokes

2nd Lieutenant Basil Vokes was entitled to the British War Medal and the Victory Medal. He was buried at Hem Farm Military Cemetery (above), Hem-Monacu, Somme, France. (GR. I. L. 6). Basil’s name appears on the memorials at St Matthew’s and St Paul’s churches, the St Thomas School Memorial, now held at Kings School, Winchester, and the King Alfred’s College Memorial, Winchester.

Researchers – DEREK WHITFIELD, CHERYL DAVIS and STEVE JARVIS

Additional sources

• We are grateful to the group that produced the website, Winchester Training College: Roll Call of the Fallen 1914-18 (https://wtcfallen.com/training-college/) for their assistance in producing this biography and for kindly allowing us to use their photographs.