Kenneth Sidney AYRES

Ken Ayres (left) with his younger brother Gordon, in about 1940. Image courtesy of Steve Ayres.

Kenneth Ayres, known as Ken, was born on 23 November 1914 in Cold Harbour, at the far southern end of the Abingdon Road, Oxford. This area was still in Berkshire at the time. Ken’s parents were Frank and Elsie Ayres, who later ran the Farriers Arms pub. Frank came originally from Stadhampton, a village seven miles south-east of Oxford, but Elsie had been born and brought up in the pub. Her father Alfred Revell was a butcher as well as the licensee of the Farriers Arms, and had his shop on the other side of the road, slightly further west. Elsie’s mother Annie probably ran the pub whilst Alfred attended to his butchery business; by 1911, when she was sixteen, Elsie was working behind the bar.

Elsie and Frank married in May 1913 at St Laurence’s Church in South Hinksey, their first child Nellie having been born about six months earlier (and her birth registered in Wandsworth, London). Their next child Kenneth was born in November 1914, followed by Gordon in May 1920.

Elsie’s younger brother Frederick Revell was killed on 10 August 1918 at the Battle of the Somme, and is named on the First World War memorial in St Matthew’s Church.

In the 1921 census the Ayres family were living in Cold Harbour, near the Farriers Arms, which was still being run by Elsie’s parents. Frank was (unusually for a man) described as carrying out ‘home duties’. Nellie was eight, Ken was six, and Gordon was one. The children attended New Hinksey School on Church Street (now Vicarage Road). Here is a picture of Gordon at school in 1927.

Elsie’s mother Annie Revell died in 1924 and her father Alfred died in 1933. Thereafter Elsie and Frank moved to the Farriers Arms, her childhood home, and took over the running of the pub. Elsie can be seen in this picture of a coach outing from the pub in around 1937, and – later in life – working behind the bar here.

Ken’s older sister Nellie died in 1934 when she was 21, and was buried in the graveyard of St Laurence's Church in South Hinksey.

In early 1935, when he was twenty, Ken married Gladys Pitson. Gladys was eighteen and had been born and brought up in Sandford-on-Thames, where her father and grandfather worked in the paper mill. She was the youngest of seven children. Ken and Gladys had two sons, David (born in the autumn of 1935) and Patrick (known as Pat, born in the early summer of 1941). In the 1939 register, taken on 29 September, four weeks after the Second World War broke out, Ken and Gladys were recorded as living at 34 Lincoln Road (off the Abingdon Road). Ken was working as a lorry driver.

Ken joined the 1st Battalion of the Ox & Bucks Light Infantry as a Private, service number 5385925. His younger brother Gordon (who had previously worked as a clerk) joined the ground crew of the RAF and served in Burma and India, amongst other places.

In mid-June 1944 Ken’s battalion began moving from Faversham in Kent to the London Docks, to sail to Northern France to take part in the Normandy D-Day operations. The advanced party, the tracked vehicle party, and the marching troops reconvened at Bény-sur-Mer, 13km north of Caen, towards the end of June. From there they moved to the Le Haut du Bosq area. On 14 July the battalion received orders for an attack on the enemy-held hamlet of Cayer, south-west of Caen. The battle which followed resulted in over 170 British casualties – killed, wounded or missing. Ken Ayres survived that battle, but shortly afterwards the battalion was at nearby Bougy, under spasmodic fire from enemy artillery and mortars. Ken was probably killed in one of those attacks; he died on 3 August 1944, aged 29.

Ken was buried at Ranville War Cemetery, 10km north-east of Caen. His gravestone carries the inscription 'Deep in our hearts / A memory is kept / Of one we loved / And will never forget.'

Ken’s nephew Steve Ayres (son of Ken’s younger brother Gordon) has two letters, one which Ken sent to Gordon when he was staying in a convalescent home for wounded officers near Sevenoaks, Kent. In it Ken says "Well Gorden I am feeling fine now I managed to work myself to the above address [Combe Bank Convalescent Home] it is a lovely place just like Buckingham Palace the food is lovely they wait on you like servants don't get up until 8am, this is the life Gordon why not try it some time you even get 30 fags a week free although we only get 7s/6d a week."

The other letter is from Ken and Gordon's father Frank to Gordon in India, dated 21 August 1944, telling him that Ken had been killed. He wrote more than a page of chatty news before saying: "Well Gordon I expect you are surprised me writing to you but I have some bad news for you we have heard from the War Office that Ken was killed in France. You must bear up Gordon and look after yourself so that you can come back to us. I suppose it was to be I still can't believe it is true he was always so confident about himself your mother is bearing up very well so I hope you will write to her as often as you can as it was a great shock to us. Gladys is also bearing up well I hope you will write to her, also she is going to stop with us. David is getting quite a big boy you will see a difference when you see him also little Pat he is such a nice little boy he is just beginning to talk."

Ken is remembered on the war memorials of all three churches in South Oxford: St Matthew’s, St Luke's in Cold Harbour, and St John the Evangelist in New Hinksey (as is another of our 24 Men of Grandpont and Cold Harbour, Reginald Collins). Ken was the cousin of Leslie Revell, who is also named on the St John the Evangelist memorial. (Ken’s mother Elsie and Leslie’s father John were brother and sister.)

Ken is also commemorated on the Oxford City Second World War Roll of Honour, which is in the church of St Michael at the Northgate on Cornmarket, and in the Second World War Book of Remembrance in the Regimental Chapel in Christ Church Cathedral.

After the war, in early 1946, Ken’s widow Gladys married her cousin Dennis Hayes. Dennis had been born in Taunton in Somerset, but his mother Matilda Naish and Gladys’s mother Kate Naish were sisters, and had grown up in the cottage adjacent to the paper mill in Sandford-on-Thames, where their father worked. Gladys and Dennis took David and Pat (aged nine and three when their father died) to live in Dennis's home town of Taunton; Gladys died there in 2005, aged 88.

Ken’s brother Gordon married Meriel Thomson (née Pyke) in 1948. Meriel came from Summertown and had worked as an office clerk during the war. In early 1944 she had married an Australian airman, David Thomson, but he had been killed only a few months later, serving with the Australian RAF in France. Their daughter Nadene was born the following summer. Meriel and Gordon later took over the running of the Farriers Arms, the third generation of the Ayres family to do so; their son Steve was born in 1960.

Ken and Gordon’s father Frank died in 1953, aged 61. Three years later their mother Elsie married William Brooks, a retired master builder; she was 69 and he was 74. She died in 1977.

Research by Brenda Stones; with thanks to Steve Ayres, nephew of Ken Ayres.

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