James Bernard WARD

Image from the Ward family tree, www.ancestry.co.uk, courtesy of Kim Ward.

James Ward is not named on the memorial in St John the Evangelist Church, but we feel that he should be, because he lived in New Hinksey. He died more than a year after the end of the war, but he has a Commonwealth War Grave Commission headstone marking his grave in St Laurence’s churchyard in South Hinksey, meaning that he was considered to be a casualty of the war.

James’s paternal family lived in New Hinksey from around 1880. His parents, Edward and Ethel (née Barnes) married in the spring of 1901, but Edward died very soon afterwards, aged only 25. James was born two or three months later, on 7 August 1901.

At the time of the 1911 register, James (aged nine) and his mother Ethel were living at 9 Cambridge Terrace, St Ebbe’s, Ethel’s childhood home, with Ethel’s younger brother, Frank Barnes. The household also contained two boarders, one of whom was George King, a college servant from Brighton.

In 1913, Ethel married George King. He served in the army on the Western Front in the First World War, and was killed in action on 5 September 1918. Neither Ethel nor James can be found in the 1921 census, but they seem to have moved to New Hinksey after George’s death.

In the spring of 1930, when he was 28, James married Mabel Rawden in Marylebone in London. Mabel was originally from Sheffield, the daughter of a depot timekeeper for the municipal tramways. James and Mabel’s son Anthony was born in Oxford in late 1932.

In the 1939 register, taken on 29 September, four weeks after the outbreak of the Second World War, the family was living at 23 Wytham Street in New Hinksey. James was working as an inspector at the Cowley motor works, and Mabel was volunteering as a first aider with the ARP (Air Raid Precaution) services.

Mabel died the following year, on 26 July 1940, when she was 33, and her son Anthony was seven. She was buried at St Laurence’s churchyard, South Hinksey.

It isn’t clear whether James joined the Royal Navy before or after his wife’s death; there is no mention of any military or reservist role for him in the 1939 register. If he joined up in 1940 he would have been 39; the age range for conscription at the start of the war was eighteen to 41, and in December 1941 the upper limit was raised to 50. James served in the Royal Navy as a First Class Stoker on board HMS Valiant. Early in the war this battleship escorted Canadian troop ships across the Atlantic. Later she served mostly in the Mediterranean, before being transferred to the Far East in 1944.

The war ended in Europe on 8 May 1945, and in the Far East on 2 September. James Ward died more than a year later, on 29 December 1946, probably in Oxford. His grave, like that of his wife Mabel, is in St Laurence’s churchyard, South Hinskey. At 45 years old, James was the oldest, and the last, of our New Hinksey men to die. His son Anthony was thirteen.

Anthony probably lived with his paternal grandmother, Ethel Ward, after his father left Oxford to join the Navy. In 1939 Ethel was living at 276 Abingdon Road and working as a university lodging house keeper. She died there in 1952.

Anthony married Janet Spreadborough in Oxford in 1953, and died in 2015 in Kidlington.

Unlike most of our New Hinksey men, James Ward is not named on the Oxford City Second World War Roll of Honour, even though it was drawn up between 1947 and 1950, after his death.

Back to the 18 Men of New Hinksey 1939-45 biographies page