Citylife in Rugeley and Cannock Chase September October 2021

Military Wedding Cpt Davies
Rugeley 1917
Wedding of Dr Peate and Miss Price
at Cannock 1925
Wedding of Miss D Nicholls in
Cannock 1939
26
Wedding Bells of
Cannock & Rugeley
By Jono Oates
............................
The church bells of Rugeley and Cannock are finally starting to
ring out once more to celebrate the marriages of couples
whose special day has been put on hold for 18 months.
Similar situations have happened in the past though, most
noticeably during World War One and Word War Two, when brides
often had to wait for their fiancés to return from the front on leave
before they were finally able to tie the knot.
On Wednesday 27th October 1915 Lieutenant Robert Wilkes, of the
11th South Staffordshire Regiment, married Miss Dorothy Hunter, who
was the daughter of local Cannock councillor Mr Jonathan Hunter, at the
Cannock Parish Church. Jonathan Hunter lived at Leacroft House at
Churchbridge and was the Managing Director of the Cannock and
Leacroft Colliery Company as well as President of the South
Staffordshire & Warwickshire Institute of Mining Engineers. The bride
was very well known in the local area and, despite the war, a large
congregation attended the ceremony. The service was carried out by the
Revd Llewelyn J Price and the bride wore a regimental gold brooch on
her dress, a gift from her brother Percy who was on active service in
France. The bridesmaids wore dresses of pale lavender crepe de chine
and ninon with waistbelts of mirror velvet and trimmings of skunk. After
the ceremony the guests attended Leacroft House, and the happy couple
departed for their honeymoon in Bournemouth.
A few years later on Saturday 24th January 1925, the Cannock Parish
Church was crowded once again, this time for the marriage of Dr
Reginald Crichton Peake, son of the Revd Peate the vicar of Barlaston,
to Miss Eileen Primrose Price, youngest daughter of Revd L J Price who
had officiated at the military wedding in 1915. Eileen, perhaps
unsurprisingly, had been heavily involved with church life and the parish
and had been a Lieutenant in the 1st Cannock Girl Guides. The guide
group attended the service providing an arch of flags as the newlyweds
left the church.
A military wedding held at St Augustine’s Parish Church in Rugeley
attracted a lot of local interest on 4th December 1917. Miss Hilda
Wilsone Broun, the only daughter of Mr and Mrs William Broun of
Lanrick House, Wolseley Road, married Captain Clement Cotterill
Davies of the Worcester Regiment. Captain Davies had spent many years
on foreign service with the army having seen action in the South African
Boer Wars, the Natal Rebellion and then in France during World War
One. He had been wounded in action on three separate occasions in
France and had returned home in March 1917 to take up war office
duties. Hilda Broun was a relative of Colonel Michael Swinfen-Broun of
Swinfen Hall, Lichfield, and amongst the many wedding gifts that the
happy couple received was a cheque from Colonel Swinfen-Broun, a
diamond bracelet from his wife and a clock from one of his daughters.
Just a few months before the start of World War Two, on Saturday 3rd
June 1939, the wedding took place of Miss Dorothy Eileen Nichols and
Captain D’Arcy John Desmond Mander at the Cannock Parish Church.
Dorothy was the elder daughter of Mr G B Nichols, the Custom and
Excise Officer at Cannock, and Captain Mander was the son of the late
Major D’Arcy Mander of the Durham Light Infantry. Mander, an officer in
the Green Howard’s Regiment, later served in World War Two where he
was captured and imprisoned in Italy. Escaping, he worked behind enemy
lines as a spy and setting up his own spy network in Rome with his
bravery earning him a Distinguished Service Order (DSO). Captured by
the SS twice (and escaping twice!) he later saw service in the Malaya
guerrilla war where he commanded the Green Howard’s.
Towards the end of the Second World War the cost of wedding
dresses had become too much for the bride’s family to bear and the time
taken to create them was putting pressure on seamstresses working on
uniforms and materials for the armed forces, therefore impacting
adversely on the war effort. So, on Saturday 22nd July 1944, Corporal
Florence Wooliscroft of the Women’s Auxiliary Air Force (WAAF), set off
the down the aisle at St Augustine’s Church in a dress lent by Eleanor
Roosevelt, wife of Franklin D Roosevelt, the President of the United
States of America, when she married Corporal John Davidson of the RAF.
Mrs Roosevelt had set up a scheme where brides would donate their
wedding dresses to her and they would then be distributed to service
brides in America and Britain. Dressed in American silk lace, Florence, of
40 Park View Terrace, Rugeley, was given away by her father before
setting off on honeymoon with her husband to sunny Carlisle.
The hardships and restrictions of weddings during the two World
Wars has been very much reflected in weddings of the last 18 months.
However, as the Covid-19 restrictions continue to lift, hopefully the
weddings in Rugeley and Cannock will be much brighter, more enjoyable
and better attended as we head towards 2022.
*Vintage photographs no copyright but courtesy of the British Newspaper
Archive
Sources: The British Newspaper Archive; www.ancestry.co.uk;
www.britishempire.co.uk; www.dmm.org.uk