Fullerton, Charles Alan Clarke
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Fullerton, Charles Alan Clarke Charles Alan Clarke Fullerton was killed in an air accident at Beverley on 29 th May 1918. He was in the same plane as 2 nd Lieutenant Tom Jowett who also died in the accident. The CWGC entry for Charles reads as follows: Name: FULLERTON, CHARLES ALAN CLARKE Initials: C A C Nationality: United Kingdom Rank: Second Lieutenant Regiment/Service: Royal Air Force Unit Text: 72nd Training Sqdn. Age: 22 Date of Death: 29/05/1918 Additional Son of John Skipwith Herbert Fullerton, of Thrybergh information: Park, Rotherham, Yorks. Casualty Type: Commonwealth War Dead Grave/Memorial In North West corner. Reference: Cemetery: THRYBERGH (ST. LEONARD) OLD CHURCHYARD Charles’ death was reported in the Personals section of the Flight magazine and he was included in the roll of honour of June 20 th 1918. It was also reported in the Barnsley Chronicle of 8th June 1918. The list of those attending the funeral shows how well connected the family was. Countess Fitzwilliam was married to the man reputed to be the richest man in England. A soldier Bertram Lamb Pearson mentions another attendee, The Hon. Irene Lawley, when he recalls: "I was sent to convalesce at Escrick Park near York, the home of Lady Wenlock, whose daughter, the Hon. Irene Lawley, had turned it into a convalescent home for officers with the help of a trained Sister and a number of her VAD friends. My stay there was indeed a delightful interlude, wrapped in the lap of luxury and, towards the end, filled with a round of social activities." Charles is remembered on the war memorial at Escrick which suggests there was a strong connection to the Lawley family whose head was the late Lord Wenlock Charles was the son of John Skipwith Herbert Fullerton and Mary Grace Clarke of Noblethorpe Hall, Barnsley. According to the 1901 census, Charles was born in 1895 in Ackworth near Pontefract. In the 1901 census, the family is to be found in the village of Kirk Smeaton that is between Pontefract and Doncaster. By 1911, now aged 15, Charles is away at Charterhouse School, Godalming in Surrey. There is a discrepancy between the address shown on the CWGC record and that in the Flight magazine. But in fact the Fullertons owned both Noblethorpe and Thrybergh but reportedly stopped living at Thrybergh in about 1900. Thrybergh lies half-way between Sheffield and Doncaster on the A630 main road. Mr JSH Fullerton, Charles’ father, disposed of Thrybergh Hall in 1929 but it had already by then become the site of the Rotherham Golf club Like many of the early pilots, Charles Fullerton learnt to fly with the GB Aero Club and he was photographed on the day he received his “wings”. Charles’ father Mr John Fullerton was a “hunting man” and well connected as a result. He was born in about 1866, the son of Charles Garth Fullerton, the Rector of Boothby Graffoe, a village a few miles to the south of Lincoln. John went to Harrow School in London. The Fullerton family were well established in the Thrybergh area and in the vicinity a pub, a school and a hospital were all named after the family. Charles’ grandfather also named Charles was married to Catherine Lucy and his son John Fullerton built a memorial to them at Thrybergh Park in 1911. By 1891, JSH Fullerton was living as a bachelor at Thrybergh Hall. Thrybergh seems to have passed from John Fullerton to his son Charles Garth and then to John Skipwith Herbert Fullerton. John was born in 1803 and died in 1847 and his wife Louisa lived at the Hall. In 1861, she was there with six unmarried daughters. The Hall pictured left now longer exists. From 1895 to 1902 John Fullerton was Master of the Badsworth Hunt; he was also Master of the Fox Hounds in Thrybergh and progressed later to the York and Anstey Hounds which would probably have made him an acquaintance of the Hall Watt family of Bishop Burton. In the 1911 census, John and Mary were the guests of George Fox MP at his home in Bramham Park near Boston Spa, Wetherby. In 1903 George Richard Lane Fox married Agnes, the daughter of 2 nd Viscount Halifax. The combination of her wealth, his determination and the compulsory purchase of the family's Irish estates, allowed George to honour a promise he had made to his grandfather, The Squire, to rebuild the main house at Bramham. The family reoccupied Bramham in 1907. George was wounded in the First World War, serving with the Yorkshire Hussars, a regiment he later commanded and the same as that joined by the Fullerton’s elder son. Fox had been elected to Parliament in 1906 and held several government posts including Secretary of State for Mines in 1923. In 1933 he was created Lord Bingley; however, he had 4 daughters and on his death the title again became extinct. The connection to Noblethorpe Hall is strong as the family owned two coal mines in Silkstone. In 1908 it is JSH Fullerton who appears as their owner; but by 1918 it was Mrs Fullerton who was the recorded owner. Noblethorpe Hall is now owned by Denis Smith, one of the solicitors implicated in the “scandal” of the fees made by legal firms representing miners in their industrial injury claims. In 1893 the Silkstone village brass band played at the wedding of Mary Clarke and John Fullerton; the band stood twelve either side of Church walk. The married couple passed through while the band played the Wedding March, afterwards attending the reception at Noblethorpe Hall. In 1891, Mary Grace Clarke, aged 19, lived at Noblethorpe Hall with her mother Emily Clarke of Ripley who at age 46 was already a widow. Mary’s place of birth is given as London. Emily had been married to Robert Couldwell Clarke who owned the Silkstone mines in the 1860’s if not earlier. Emily is reported as attending her aviator grandson’s funeral in Thrybergh. There was another obvious connection between the Clarkes and the Fullertons - coal; the Fullertons were leasing land to the north of Thrybergh for coal extraction, the first pit began to produce coal commercially in 1869. The Clarkes were Barnsley wiredrawers in the 17th and 18th centuries. Jonas Clarke, born 1758, son of Joseph Clarke, became an attorney in Barnsley and acquired extensive property in the district, including Noblethorpe (1792) Joseph, his elder son, also became an attorney and probably inherited the Barnsley property. The second son, Robert Couldwell Clarke, inherited the Noblethorpe estate and worked the Silkstone coal seams under his lands on a considerable scale. The business was carried on by his widow, Sarah Ann Clarke and his son (also Robert Couldwell Clarke). They added considerably to the estate. The last named Robert died in his thirties, having married Emily and leaving an only daughter, Mary Grace, who married J.S.H. Fullerton of Thrybergh. In the 1881 census, Emily, Robert’s widow, was a visitor at the home of the Rev Cecil Legard of Scorborough. The Reverend Cecil Henry Legard (1843-1918) was a celebrated steeplechase rider and clergyman. He was educated at Magdalene College, Cambridge, and held a number of livings before becoming rector of Cottesbrooke, Northamptonshire, in 1887. In 1873, he married Emily Hall of Scorborough, a village to the north of Beverley; she was an aunt of ERB Hall Watt, lord of the manor of Bishop Burton until his death in 1908. Peter Watkin’s book the Soul of Wit refers to him thus: The Reverend became a baronet in about 1910 on the death of an older brother, Charles. Presumably this meant he no longer had to be so partial. John Robert Ranken Fullerton Charles’ older brother was John Robert Ranken Fullerton, born late 1894 in Thrybergh near Rotherham. He survived both world wars and we find him returning from Kobe, Japan on the Glenroy in April 1951. He was a retired army officer bound for Boleskine House near Foyers in Inverness-shire. He was accompanied by his wife, Evelyn May Fullerton (b. 1890). I have not been able to find much more information about the brother, but Boleskine House is of interest. From 1899 to 1913 it was owned by Aleister Crowley, a notorious occultist and once dubbed the “wickedest man in the west”. It was bought in the 1970’s by Jimmy Page, the guitarist of Led Zeppelin and a fan of Crowley but is now in ordinary, private ownership. On 24 th April 1915 John was appointed 2 nd Lieutenant: But in 1921, This event occurred when the 19 th Hussars were disbanded. Burke’s Peerage reports that Captain John Robert Rankin Fullerton married Hon. Moira Faith Lilian de Yarburgh-Bateson, daughter of Robert Wilfred de Yarburgh- Bateson, 3rd Baron Deramore, before 1924. This creates another connection to Bishop Burton in that she is recorded as a (minor, considering her standing) contributor to the war memorial in the village – the sum being 10 shillings. Captain John Robert Rankin Fullerton gained the rank of Captain in the service of the 15th/19th Hussars. The marriage record confirms that this wedding took place in London in 1919. John subsequently married Evelyn May Palmer in 1924 after the annulment of the previous marriage in 1923. John’s first wife also re-married in 1924, to Sir Edward Chichester, a marriage that lasted until 1935. http://www.nationalarchives.gov.uk/a2a/records.aspx?cat=050-ddfa&cid=-1#-1 .