Alan Leonard MARTIN
The Singapore Memorial in Kranji War Cemetery, 14 miles north of the city of Singapore. Image from the Commonwealth War Graves Commission.
Alan Martin was born on 1 December 1920 in Brentford, Middlesex and baptised at St Mary’s Church, Ealing the following January. His father was Leonard Martin, who was originally from Petersham in Surrey. His mother was Alice, née Davis, who was from Walthamstow in Essex. Leonard and Alice married in Brentford in early 1920.
Leonard had been living and working as an under-gardener at the Beel House estate near Amersham in Buckinghamshire since at least 1911, and on their marriage, Alice went to live with him there. In 1921, Alan and his parents were living in the lodge at Beel House, where Leonard was now employed as a motor car cleaner. They were sharing the lodge with another young family, the Youngs; Walter Young was the farm carter. Living in the main house were Lieutenant Colonel Arthur Lyle (scion of the sugar company which became Tate and Lyle), his wife, daughter, and a staff of eight live-in servants.
Soon afterwards, the Lyles moved to Barrington Court in Somerset and the Martins moved with them as part of the household staff. Alan’s younger siblings were born there: Evelyn in 1924; Harry in 1925; and Peter in 1928.
Colonel Lyle undertook an extensive restoration of Barrington Court, which had been gifted to the National Trust in 1907 in a ruinous condition, but without any endowment to carry out much-needed repairs. It must have been an extraordinary place for the Martin children to grow up.
Alan’s father Leonard died on 21 August 1931 in Bristol Mental Hospital, aged 43, leaving £226 19s 6d (about £12,000 in today’s money). In April 1932 Alan was sent to Lord Wandsworth College in Long Sutton, Hampshire, which had been founded in 1912 as a boarding school for orphans of agricultural workers. His younger brothers Harry and Peter later followed him there. Alan was in Hyde House, excelled at cricket, and gained the Oxford School Certificate in 1937.
After leaving school in 1937, Alan moved to 9 Beaconsfield Road in Basingstoke, Hampshire, and joined Basingstoke Post Office as a trainee sorting clerk and telegraphist. By December 1938 he was stationed at nearby Whitchurch. In June 1939 he moved to Edgware and Stanmore subdistrict office in the same role.
It would seem that Alan’s family moved to 31 Whitehouse Road in Oxford in around 1937. His widowed mother Alice Martin first appeared on the electoral register for that address in 1937-38. She moved in with two older women, sisters Clara and Rosina Davis, who may have been her relatives. They had been tailoresses, and had lived there since at least 1901. Rosina died in July 1939; the household recorded in the 1939 register, taken on 29 September, comprised Clara Davis; another older single woman of ‘private means’, Matilda Heiden; Alice Martin; and three of her children Alan (now aged eighteen), Evelyn (fifteen), and Peter (eleven). Harry (aged fourteen) was away boarding at Lord Wandsworth College in Hampshire. Alan’s job was recorded as ‘sorting clerk and telegraphist’, but it seems unlikely that he would have been commuting from Oxford to north-west London, so perhaps he was living in London, but happened to be staying with his mother and siblings on the night the register was taken.
Alan joined the army and became a Gunner in the 7 Coast Regiment of the Royal Artillery, service number 11054574. In February 1942 the regiment was involved in the battle for, and subsequent fall of Singapore to Japanese forces. With other survivors of his regiment, Alan was safely evacuated to Sumatra. On being moved from there however, the ship on which they were travelling was torpedoed on the night of 2/3 March 1942, and Alan was amongst those listed as missing. The War Office later concluded that that there was no possibility that he could have survived. He was 21.
Alan is commemorated on the Singapore Memorial in the Kranji War Cemetery, which bears the names of over 24,000 casualties of the Commonwealth land and air forces who have no known grave. Another two of our ‘24 men of Grandpont’, Edward Boswell and Ernest Finch, are also named on the memorial.
Alan is also commemorated in the All Saints Church Memorial Chapel in Long Sutton, Hampshire, and on the nearby war memorial of his former school, Lord Wandsworth College. His name is remembered in the Roll of Honour of the Sternians, the alumni of the college, and listed in the General Post Office Book of Remembrance. He is commemorated on the Oxford City WWII Roll of Honour, which is in the Church of St Michael at the Northgate on Cornmarket.
A few months after Alan died, his younger brother Harry gained his School Certificate and left Lord Wandsworth College to join the Post Office Engineering Department at Oxford.
Alan left an estate worth £155 14d 5d (about £8,000 in today’s money). His mother Alice continued to live at 31 Whitehouse Road until at least 1971; she died in July 1972 aged 84.
Alan’s sister Evelyn married William Carter in 1966; she died in August 2006.