Arthur Robert WILSON

WILSON, Arthur Robert

Service Number: 3289
Enlisted: Not yet discovered
Last Rank: Private
Last Unit: 56th Infantry Battalion
Born: Spalding, Lincolnshire, England. , 1883
Home Town: North Sydney, North Sydney, New South Wales
Schooling: Not yet discovered
Occupation: Not yet discovered
Died: Died of wounds, France, 9 August 1916
Cemetery: Wimereux Communal Cemetery
Grave I. P. 11A. Personal Inscription: THE DEARLY LOVED HUSBAND OF ELMA HAZEL WILSON THY WILL BE DONE , Wimereux Communal Cemetery, Wimereux, Nord Pas de Calais, France
Memorials: Australian War Memorial Roll of Honour
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World War 1 Service

20 Dec 1915: Involvement Private, 3289, 20th Infantry Battalion, Battle for Pozières , --- :embarkation_roll: roll_number: '13' embarkation_place: Sydney embarkation_ship: HMAT Suevic embarkation_ship_number: A29 public_note: ''
20 Dec 1915: Embarked Private, 3289, 20th Infantry Battalion, HMAT Suevic, Sydney
9 Aug 1916: Involvement Private, 3289, 56th Infantry Battalion, Battle for Pozières , --- :awm_ww1_roll_of_honour_import: awm_service_number: 3289 awm_unit: 56th Australian Infantry Battalion awm_rank: Private awm_died_date: 1916-08-09

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Biography contributed by Geoffrey Gillon

Births Sep 1883 WILSON Arthur Robert Spalding 7a 367

 

He was 33 and the son of Joseph and Lilian Wilson; husband of Elma Hazel Wilson, of 87, Oarley Rd., Manly, New South Wales.

He is honoured on the  Spalding War Memorial built to remember those killed in the First World War. It stands in the formal gardens of the important medieval building on Churchgate, called Ayscoughfee Hall, [which was owned by the local district council] overlooking the ornamental lake and the extensive gardens.

The memorial is in the form of open fronted, and sided, building with the roll of honour on the stone rear wall. It was designed by Sir Edwin Lutyens, famous for his design of the Cenotaph in London. Sir Edwin is said to have visited the gardens and chose the site for the war memorial.

The proposal for a memorial to Spalding's war dead originated in January 1918 with Barbara McLaren, whose husband and the town's Member of Parliament, Francis McLaren, was killed in a flying accident during the war. She engaged Lutyens via a family connection and the architect produced a plan for a grand memorial cloister surrounding a circular pond, in the middle of which would be a Cross. When Barbara McLaren approached the council with her proposal, it generated considerable debate within the community and several alternative schemes were suggested. After a public meeting and a vote in 1919, a reduced-scale version of her proposal emerged as the preferred option, in conjunction with a clock on the town's corn exchange building.

The total cost of the memorial was £3,500 of which Barbara McLaren and her father-in-law contributed £1,000 each; her brother-in-law donated a pair of painted stone flags and the remainder was raised from voluntary subscription, which took until 1922. The memorial consists of a brick pavilion at the south end of the garden and a Stone of Remembrance, both at the head of a long reflecting pool, which incorporates the remains of an 18th-century canal. It was unveiled at a ceremony on 9 June 1922 presided over by General Sir Ian Hamilton and dedicated by Reverend Alfred Jarvis, Assistant Chaplain-General to Northern Command. Barbara McLaren attended the ceremony along with several other members of the Jekyll and McLaren families.  Lutyens went on to use the style of the pavilion for shelter buildings in several war cemeteries on the Western Front, though none of his other war memorials follow the design and the memorial became relatively obscure. Spalding War Memorial is today a Grade I listed building, having been upgraded when Lutyens's war memorials were declared a "national collection" and all were granted listed building status or had their listing renewed.

Lutyens's memorial was constructed by Hodson Limited of Nottingham, at the south end of the formal gardens, replacing an earlier castellated tower—a 19th-century folly known as the "Owl Tower".

Several dignitaries gave speeches at the ceremony, including Jarvis, who spoke of the dead among the poppies on the Western Front, a "symbol of oblivion". Hamilton spoke of the results of the carnage of the war; referring to the idea that the First World War was the war to end war, he told the assembled: "The result has been so different. Europe is a seething cauldron of racial hatred; Ireland  is linked in our minds with the idea of murder; Mesopotamia [modern-day Iraq], India, and Egypt are straining at the leash of civilisation." The general concluded: "If you want to end war, you must end hatred" and that "In that way, I believe we shall be working towards peace, and in that way we will be doing in our own small way our best each of us—and Spalding minds united are a great force—and in that way we shall perpetuate the memories of those whose untimely deaths we have come here to commemorate".  At the conclusion of the speeches a lone bugler played the "Last Post" and the crowd sang the national anthem, after which the dignitaries—including Barbara McLaren and her son laid floral tributes around the Stone of Remembrance.

The names of a further 24 casualties from the First World War were added to the central panel of the memorial prior to Remembrance Sunday 2014. The additions were the result of research by a member of the local branch of the Royal British Legion (RBL), which produced a list of 50 names, though the remaining casualties' connections to Spalding were deemed too tenuous for their names to be included. As a result of local government reorganisations, the memorial is now the responsibility of South Holland District Council, which is based in Spalding.

Spalding's war memorial comprises a brick-built pavilion structure with hipped roof of red pantiles and floored with red bricks in a herringbone pattern. The side of the pavilion facing the pool has three Tuscan stone arches, with another Tuscan arch opening on each sidewall. The solid rear wall bears two painted stone flags—the Union Flag to the left and the White Ensign to the right—and three panels on which are inscribed the names of over 200 servicemen from Spalding who died in the First World War. The central panel bears the dedication:

"IN LOVE AND HONOUR OF THOSE WHO GAVE THEIR LIVES FOR THEIR COUNTRY IN THE YEARS OF WAR MCMXIV – MCMXIX  THIS MEMORIAL IS RAISED IN THEIR HOME BY THE MEN AND WOMEN OF SPALDING".

The frieze inside the pavilion contains a further inscription:

"ETERNAL REST GRANT TO THEM O LORD AND LET LIGHT PERPETUAL SHINE UPON THEM".

 

A Stone of Remembrance is sited on a platform of three steps in front of the pavilion, inscribed with the phrase "THEIR NAME LIVETH FOR EVERMORE" and the dates of the two world wars.

The stone is carved from a single piece of rock, with very slight curvature (entasis) barely visible to the naked eye. It is 12 feet (3.7 metres) long and devoid of any decoration besides the inscription. A long pool leads away from the structures—originally a canal from the garden first recorded in 1732, which Lutyens remodelled to form a reflecting pool in the style of an Italian formal garden; three low fountains were added at a later date. The pavilion and the pool are surrounded by yew hedges, which on the east side are broken at regular intervals by iron gates which lead to a peace garden, added in 1994. The view of the pavilion at the head of the reflecting pool is reminiscent of Bodnant Garden at Lord Aberconway's home in Wales, Francis McLaren's childhood home.

 

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