Charles Victor James CASTLE (1891–1918)
© Images & Voices,
Oxfordshire County Council
Charles Victor James Castle was born in Cumnor in Berkshire in 1891, the illegitimate son of Emily Florence Clemson. (His mother, who was born in Cumnor on 2 May 1870 and baptised there on 17 August, was herself the illegitimate daughter of a woman called Mary Clemson or Clempson, who was a pedlar.)
When Charles’s birth was registered in the Abingdon Registration District in the second quarter of 1891, he was named as Charles Victor James Clemson; and he was baptised with that surname at Cumnor Church on 5 July 1891.
When Charles was three years old, on 6 August 1894 at Cumnor Church, his mother Emily Florence Clemson married Charles Castle (born in Islip and baptised there on 13 August 1871). He appears to have been Charles’s father.
In about 1900 the family moved to 23 Hayfield Road in St Margaret’s parish. Charles attended SS Philip & James School, and later became a member of the Boys’ Club in Polstead Road.
At the time of the 1901 census Charles (9) was living at 23 Hayfield Road with his parents. Charles Castle senior is shown as a jobbing gardener, and Charles junior as a child of nine.
By the time of the 1911 census Charles Victor James Clemson (19) had become a jobbing gardener, and he later worked for Messrs Bates, florists of Rose Lane. He was still living at 23 Hayfield Road with Charles Castle (40) and his wife Emily Castle (41). They stated that they had had one child together, and Charles Victor James Clemson (19) was described as the son of Charles Castle. Also living with them was Charles Castle senior's young stepbrother Ernest Bateman (13)
When he was aged 21 Charles emigrated to Canada on the Ausonia, arriving in Quebec on 7 May 1913. He settled in Brampton in the Peel region of Southern Ontario, and continued to work as a florist. His future wife Annie Louise Greenwood (born in St Aldate's, Oxford on 11 February 1889) had at the time of the 1911 census been working as a nurse and lived at 20 Buckingham Street in Oxford with her parents Benjamin Greenwood, who was a gas stoker, and Annie. She followed him out on the Andaniaine, arriving in Quebec on 30 August 1913, and they were married at Peel, Ontario n 29 April 1914: Charles gave his occupation as a florist. They had one son, Victor Frederick Castle, born at Brampton on 29 April 1914.
Charles Castle joined the Canadian Army in mid-1916, and his wife Annie came back to Oxford to live with her parents again at 20 Buckingham Street, Grandpont.
In the First World War Charles Victor James Castle served as a Private in the 9th Canadian Light Trench Mortar Battery (Service No. 775462). He died in France at the age of 27 on 18 August 1918. He is buried in the Villers-Bretonneux Military Cemetery (VIA.A.9), and his parents paid for the additional inscription THY WILL BE DONE on his headstone.
He is remembered on the war memorial outside St Margaret’s Church in north Oxford, on a brass memorial plaque inside St Matthew’s Church in south Oxford, and on the Canada Virtual War Memorial.
His brief obituary in the Oxford Chronicle of 30 August 1918 is shown below:
After the War
Charles’s widow
Mrs Anne Louise Castle, née Greenwood (32) and her son Victor (6) were living at Buckingham Street at the time of the 1921 census in the home of her brother Harold (28), who was a storekeeper for the Oxford Gas Company, and his wife Beatrice; Anne was working as for the dressmaker Nellie Hall at 24 Holywell Street.
On 1 July 1922 at St Clement's Church, Oxford Anne married her second husband Henry James Hewer (34), a lodge porter of 17 Jeune Street. They had three daughters: Kathleen (born 8 January 1923), Jean (born 15 February 1924), and Barbara (born near the beginning of 1928). The 1939 Register shows Anne living with her family at 49 St Aldate's Street, where her husband was a confectioner & grocer. Henry died near the beginning of 1953 and Anne near the beginning of 1958.
Charles’s parents
The 1921 census shows Charles Castle senior (52), described as a painter's labourer for the Army Ordnance Corps at Didcot, living at 23 Hayfield Road with Emily (53).
Charles's father died at the age of 53 in 1923. His mother Mrs Emily Florence Castle remained as a widow at 23 Hayfield Road until 1929, when at the age of 59 she married Henry Phipps in the Headington registration district. At the time of the 1939 Register they wre living at Henry's home at 26 Hayfield Road, and Henry was working as a general labourer. He died in 1952, and Emily died near the beginning of 1962. .
See also
- CWGC: CASTLE, Charles Victor James
(where he is wrongly assumed to have come from Oxford County in Ontario rather than Oxford in England) - Oxford Chronicle, 30 August 1918: Photograph of Charles Castle on p. 7 and obituary on p. 8
- Oxford Journal Illustrated, 25 September 1918, “Heroes of the War”: photograph of Charles Castle, who had died five weeks earlier
- Veterans Affairs Canada, First World War Book of Remembrance (page 382):
Charles Castle (same error as CWGC) - Wikipedia: Oxfordshire & Buckinghamshire Light Infantry