Ernest Prewett
Memorial: Alveston - St Helen's Church
Regiment: Royal Engineers
Medals: British War Medal, Next of Kin Memorial Plaque 1914 - 1921, Victory Medal
Rank and number: Sapper 2358
Parents: Adopted by Jesse and Elizabeth Hook
Marital status: Married
Home address: Plum Tree Cottage, Rudgeway, Bristol with his wife Mary Jane Prewett (nee Davis)
Pre-war occupation: Sawyer
Date of birth: 1884
Place of birth: Thornbury, Bristol
Date of death: 20/07/1916
Buried/Commemorated at: Aubers Ridge British Cemetery (Ref. VI.B.5), Aubers, France
Age: 32
Further information:
In the late nineteenth century there were several Prewett families living in the general area of Thornbury but it is known that Ernest Prewett, who had been born in Thornbury, had been adopted before the age of seven by the relatively elderly Jesse and Elizabeth Hook. The Hook family lived in the cottage on Moxhams Farm in Tytherington where Jesse worked as a labourer. At the time of Queen Victoria’s death in 1901, Jesse Hook, at the not inconsiderable age of seventy, was working as a stone breaker in Alveston. He and Elizabeth had moved to live at Rookery Farm cottage on Shellards Lane while the seventeen-year-old Ernest was still with them employed as a sawyer.
Ernest was 30 years old when war was declared and had by then married Mary Jane Davis and they were living at Plum Tree Cottage close to Rudgeway Chapel on the Gloucester Road where their children, Mabel, Percy and Florrie had been born. Ernest enlisted in Bristol and was assigned to the 478th Field Company of the Royal Engineers. The Sappers of the 478th arrived in France on the 23rd of May 1916 and, after a spell at Le Touret, moved to Laventie near Armentières. They were supporting the infantry by building a trench system to connect the old British front line to the new trench system recently captured from the Germans. Work began and it went well until heavy shelling took place and the men were driven back to the reserve trenches by the ensuing counter attack. The Battalion war diary records for the 20th of July 1916, “Sapper Corporal Barber, Cornwall and Boulton were wounded and E. Prewett was Killed in Action.” Thirty-two year old Ernest Prewett left behind a widow and three children, none of whom married. Ernest is buried in Aubers Ridge Cemetery to the west of Lille.
Mrs Prewett, a well-built lady sometimes known as ‘Auntie Polly’ Prewett continued to live in Rudgeway and took in a lodger, Teddy Whitfield, a jockey of small stature who, on occasion, would be unable to walk home after imbibing a drink or two at The Fox on Old Down. Mrs Prewett, on the other hand, was seen to have no difficulty in carrying Teddy back home.
By kind permission, this information is based on the following source(s):
Forces War Records and CWGC. Ancestry.co.uk