First World War family link for couple visiting Lincolnshire’s Skegness line
A COUPLE who visited the Lincolnshire Coast Light Railway were reunited with both a locomotive on which an ancestor worked and a wagon on which he may have travelled to the front line trenches in the First World War before he was killed in action.
Pam and Roger Biggs, from Bedworth, Warwickshire, met Peckett 0-6-0ST No. 1008 of 1903 Jurassic, which was supplied new to Kaye & Co’s cement works in Long Itchington, near Southam, where Pam’s grandfather, William Frederick Hancocks, worked. Jurassic was one of six identical locomotives that took limestone from the quarry to be made into cement.
The site is still operational and is now owned by Cemex.
Jurassic is owned and maintained by the LCLR’s Historic Vehicles Trust, as is a War Department Light Railways’ Class D bogie wagon built by Claytons of Lincoln, used to transport soldiers, ammunition, food, medical supplies and hay to the trenches. Now restored, it has been converted into a disabled access carriage.
William Frederick Hancocks is known to have enlisted in the Coldstream Guards and took part in the third battle of Ypres (Passchendaele) that cost the British 300,000 casualties and the Germans 200,000 between July 31 and November 10, 1917.
He had been on home leave during 1917, after which his wife fell pregnant with their second child, Freda Jessica, Pam’s mother. He was killed in action on September 21, 1917, and never met his daughter. His brother Jesse had also been killed earlier that year while serving in Mesopotamia.
Having lost two sons, Pam’s greatgrandmother, Eliza Hancocks, contacted the War Office and asked for the release of her youngest son, 18-year-old Frederick, who was serving in Egypt. Her request was granted, and Frederick also worked at Kate’s after the war. He died there in 1958 when he was aged 60.
Pam and Roger have seen William Frederick Hancocks’ name on the memorial to the fallen at Tyne Cot in Belgium and now, seeing both Jurassic and travelling in a WDLR wagon that is basically identical to the one in which he would have made his final journey to the front line, have been poignant moments.
Pam said: “It was a remarkable experience at Skegness to see two significant relics from my grandfather’s life. We were made very welcome by everyone on the Lincolnshire Coast Light Railway and we realise we are now very much part of the history of this unique heritage railway”.