BAMBER BRIDGE IN WORLD WAR 1
There are 8 Bennisons on the Rolls of Honour of St Aidan’s and St Saviour’s. They come from (at least) two different families: Miles and Levi are brothers; in another family, Albert, Richard, William, John and Thomas are brothers. I haven’t traced the remaining F Bennison.
Miles and Levi Bennison
In the photo, Levi is standing on the right, Miles on the left.
Parents of Levi and Miles were John Bennison (b. 1865) and Jennet Howcroft (b. 1863, d. 1933). The family lived at Lostock Fold, Bamber Bridge. John was a loomer and Jennet a weaver. John was the youngest of 10 children.
Levi was born on 20 Jan 1894. He died in 1981.
Miles was born on 10 May 1895. He married Florence Coulton (b. 1894 in Farington) on 10 Sep 1921. He died 1974.
They had a sister, Norah, b. 1904, who never married, and died in 1989.
Levi (wearing the bandolier in the photo) was in the Royal Field Artillery. His Medal Record card shows his service number as 696114, from this we know he was attached to the 57th (West Lancs) Divisional Ammunition Column. This was a fighting unit in its own right as well as being responsible for the supply of ammunition to the rest of the Division. So Levi would have seen action with the other Briggers in 286 Brigade at Armetières in June 1917; Passchendaele at the end of October 1917; The Battle of the Lys in April 1918 and the liberation of Cambrai in September/October 1918.
Miles was originally in the Loyal North Lancashire Regiment attached to the 8th Battalion. His medal record shows he was first in the LNLR (service number 14171, where he was a Corporal), but then he was transferred to the Royal Engineers (service no. 147283).
8LNLR was formed in 1914, spent a year in training and was sent to France in September 1915. Early on in their deployment, whilst in reserve, they were put at the disposal of the Royal Engineers and set to work building and improving trenches, so one possibility is that Miles continued with this deployment. Another possibility is that he returned to the Battalion and fought with them at Broadmarsh Crater then the Battle of the Somme in 1916. The following year, the Battalion was engaged in the opening assaults of the Third Battle of Ypres (Passchendaele). Army losses were so great by now that some battalions had to be disbanded and the men dispersed to other battalions to replace the depleted numbers. 8LNLR was disbanded at the beginning of 1918, so another possible scenario is that Miles was sent to the Royal Engineers as part of this redeployment.
There are 8 Bennisons on the Rolls of Honour in St Aidan’s and St Saviour’s:
St Aidan’s: A (Albert Edward, RFA 680788);
St Saviour’s: J(ohn)
T (Thomas, RFA 680787)
Albert, Richard, William, John and Thomas were brothers. Their parents (William and Elizabeth) had 17 children in total, 5 of whom died in infancy. Albert (b. 1894) and Thomas (b. 1892) enlisted together in May 1915 and served in “C” Battery of 286 Brigade, Royal Field Artillery though at some stage Albert transferred to the Royal Garrison Artillery with service number 363046.
John Bennison (b. 1884) enlisted in the Royal Field Artillery in November 1914, with service number 1687. He was later transferred to the Lancashire Heavy Brigade in the Royal Garrison Artillery (service number 30870) and was promoted to Bombardier. I don’t know anything more about his overseas service. John married Elizabeth Wareing in 1904 and they had 4 children.
William Bennison was born in 1883, I have assumed he is the W Bennison on the Roll of Honour but I have found no conclusive military records.
Richard Bennison was born in 1888 and again I have assumed he is the R Bennison on the Roll of Honour but I have found no conclusive military records.
I haven’t found an F Bennison in the Censuses or military records.