Virtual
War Memorial
Australia

Births Sep 1890  Hurt Charles Basford 7b 134
 

He was the son of Susan Hurt (later Wain) of 115, Hempshill Lane, Bulwell, Notts, England, and the late Charles Hurt. Watnall. Watnall is an area of settlement in Nottinghamshire, England. It is part of Greasley civil parish, and is located one mile north of Kimberley. It is in the Nuthall West and Greasley (Watnall) ward of Broxtowe Council. The village is barely separated from Nuthall.

Service number 4426-26th Bn Australian Infantry (AIF)

Charles enlisted 12/10/1915. His unit embarked from Brisbane, Queensland, on board HMAT A16 Star of Victoria on 30 March 1916.

In the UK, Charles is remembered as follows:-

Kimberley British School War Memorial, Newdigate Street, Kimberley, Nottinghamshire NG16 2NJ. The school was closed in 1946 and later demolished. The memorial was transferred to Kimberley Parish Hall which stands on the site of the former school in Newdigate Street.

Dedication: To the memory of Kimberley British School boys who fell in the Great War 1914-1918 Their name liveth for evermore.'

St Patrick's Church War Memorial, Kimberley Road, Nuthall, Nottingham.

The memorial comprises a stained glass window in the south wall of the nave and an alabaster and slate tablet below. The tablet bears the dedication: 'This window is erected to the Glory of God and in ever loving memory of those brave men of Nuthall who gave their lives for King and Country in the Great War of 1914-1918 in the cause of justice and freedom.' Nuthall war memorial committee raised £183 1s 6d which met the cost of the window (approx. £94), the tablet (approx. £41) and the costs of the faculties and the service of dedication. The memorial was probably dedicated some time after September 1920, when the bills for the memorials were paid, and before the end of November by which time the accounts for the costs associated with the service of dedication had been met. The window was supplied and installed by Burlison & Grylls, one of the most successful stained glass firms in England, and the tablet was supplied and installed by F. S. Birch, monumental sculptor, of Montague Street, Bulwell. (Sources: Nottinghamshire Archives, ref PR 25,833-25,834, St Patrick's church. Southwell Diocesan Magazine, Vol XXXIII Jan 1920 No. 382 - Dec 1920 No.393.)
The plaque below the stained glass window is a brown mottled nowy headed alabaster tablet with rebated edges, moulded border, and a Cross and palm fronds at the head; inscription incised in upright capital lettering; grey mottled marble backboard.

Kimberley - Holy Trinity Church, Additional Names War Memorial
The Great War memorial at Holy Trinity Church, unveiled on Remembrance Day 2018, was commissioned by the Rector of Kimberley, Canon Barbara Holbrook with the support of her Parochial Church Council. Fourteen of those listed are already commemorated locally, three on Kimberley’s Main Street memorial, ten on a British School honours board and one by a tribute to worshippers at St Paul’s Methodist chapel. In addition, Holy Trinity’s new plaques acknowledge for the first time in the town the sacrifices of forty four Kimberley men who lost their lives between 1914 and 1918.

No railway employment record card can be located for Charles Hurt. The Institute Roll of Honour Book allocates him to the 11th Reinforcements of the 26th Battalion, and the Per-Way Branch of the Railways and Charles HURT (Service Number 4426) served in those units and described himself on his Attestation Papers as a ‘Fettler’. The NSW Government Gazette listing for 1914 shows a man of that name as a temporary general labourer on the Grafton to Murwillumbah isolated line and the 1916 Annual Report includes a reference that he had been given a permanent position as a fettler on 26 August 1916, though this is difficult to reconcile with the fact that he had enlisted in December 1915.

Charles Hurt was born at Watnall, Nottinghamshire, England about August 1890. He worked as a fettler for the NSW Railways on the line between Grafton and Murwillumbah. When he enlisted at Lismore he was not married and he gave his mother, Susan, still living in England as his next of kin. He left Australia from Brisbane, aboard HMAT ‘Star of Victoria’ on 30th March 1916. He reached Egypt only six weeks later. Almost immediately he embarked from Alexandria to join the British Expeditionary Force in France.

In the middle of July, he was taken on the strength of his unit.

Early in August 1916, he was wounded in action, with ‘shell shock’. He was conveyed by the Ambulance Train to the No. 1 Canadian General Hospital, and then to No. 6 Convalescent Depot before re-joining his unit on 21st August. 

He was killed in action on 5th November 1916. He has no known grave. He is remembered on the Villers-Bretonneux Memorial, Picardie, France.

- based on the Australian War Memorial Honour Roll and notes for the Great Sydney Central Station Honour Board.