Black Country Genealogy
SOME BENNETT FAMILY HISTORY |
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This is my maternal Grandfather Harry Bennett and his wife, my Grandmother Isabella Bennett (nee Dent). Harry was born on 15th June 1897 in Cross Street, Darlaston. Isabella was apparently born on 17th November 1897 in Wednesbury, although we have not yet been able to locate her birth certificate. Harry Bennett worked in one of the metal industries for which the Black Country was famous the world over. In 1921, when he married Isabella census information shows that he was working as an iron stamper. During the Great War Harry served as Private 17250 in the 7th Battalion Royal Lincolnshire Regiment. He was one of the fortunate few who survived that horrific conflict. After the war Harry returned home to Wednesbury. He and Isabella Isabella had met before the outbreak of war, but married on January 22nd 1921 at the register office in West Bromwich. During their lifetimes they raised a total of nine children together. Harry died on 28th December 1953 and was buried at Fallings Heath Cemetery, Wednesbury. Isabella lived on until October 16th 1974, she was buried with her husband. PRIVATE 17250 HARRY BENNETT OF DARLASTON AND THE BATTLE OF THE SOMME The 1st July 2016 marked the centenary of the Battle of the Somme. My maternal grandfather Henry (Harry) Bennett, from Darlaston took part in that terrible action, whilst serving as Private 17250 in the 7th Battalion of the Royal Lincolnshire Regiment. During the Great War like many others Harry enlisted and first served abroad shortly after January 1st 1916, at which time he was not even nineteen years of age. Within months of arriving in Europe he took part in some of the most savage and bloody fighting seen so far in the Great War, and was to go on to participate in some of the conflict’s most deadly battles. The following is a brief summary of the 7th Battalion’s involvement in the early days of the brutal Battle of the Somme. This brief narrative is a summary of information recorded in the battalion’s actual daily war diary, which still exists today. In the final days of June 1916 the 7th Battalion was on the move in northern France, men and equipment headed toward the frontline to take part in a major offensive they knew very well was coming. With a summer offensive highly likely, between the 13th and 24th of June the men went into training near to Allonville. On the 27th June, with training completed the 7th received Order 66 and traveled the 16km to Heilly on the same day. There they awaited what for many of the men was to be their ultimate fate. The next order they received took them 8km to Morlancourt on June 30th, the eve of the opening of the Somme offensive. There they awaited further orders, although they must have known the battle was imminent. We can only imagine how they felt as they waited. In the early morning of July 1st the Battle of the Somme commenced. Sometime before 8am the 7th marched to Becourt Wood via Meaulte and into the Fricourt frontline trenches where they relieved the 6th Dorsets. There they waited for their moment to come, and come it did as the attack went ahead all along the front line. The 7th received their orders at 8am, they were to attack Fricourt with the South Staffords. At 12.15pm the 7th advanced reaching their first objective, Fricourt Wood by 12.50pm where they took up positions. With the battle raging all along the front the 7th remained near Fricourt for the next two days. On July 3rd the battalion took a number of casualties due to enemy machine gun fire, but by 1.20pm they had captured the enemy trench known as Railway Alley and along with it no less than 1000 German prisoners. The next day they took another enemy position which was located just six yards in front of their own position, such was the closeness of the fighting on the Somme. July 5th saw the 7th reorganising and refitting. By this date, just four days into the battle their casualties included four officers and thirty-five other ranks killed. Another four officers and one hundred and fifty-three other ranks had been wounded. Reinforcements came in the days that followed, but the losses were of course destined to get worse. It was not until the end of August 1916 that the 7th had any respite from the terrible fighting. As for Harry Bennett, he survived the mud and the blood of the Somme, when so many of his friends did not do so. He went on through the Great War to face the Battle of Arras in April 1917 and the awful fighting at Passchendaele between July and November 1917. He also served at the Battle of Amiens in the summer of 1918. Incredibly he survived it all and returned home to the Black Country at the end of the war. Harry and Isabella lived out the remainder of their lives together at 41 Moor Street, Mesty Croft, Wednesbury. |
41 Moor Street, Mesty Croft, Wednesbury.
The grave of Harry and Isabella Bennett, Fallings Heath Cemetery, Wednesbury.
This memorial no longer exists.
Private Harry Bennett's Great War medal card.
The image below is a military portrait of Harry Bennett, created shortly after the end of the Great War, when he was just twenty-one years of age. Portraits of this type were popular souvenirs with service men returning to civilian life following the conflict. The portrait itself now shows the effects of its one-hundred and three-year history, but it still exists. I understand that these images from the past were created by first photographing the subject themselves, and then re-touching with oils in order to create the look of a traditional oil on canvas portrait.
The image below shows Darlaston cenotaph on the evening of 11th November, 2023, Armistice Day and the eve of Remembrance Sunday. Harry Bennett's picture is inset, bottom right.
The 1921 UK Census
The release of the 1921 census provided a further window on the lives of Harry and Isabella Bennett in the years immediately following Harry's return from the Great War. The census itself was taken on the 19th of June 1921, having been postponed from the 24th of April due to widespread industrial unrest and the threat of a national strike. By the time the census data was gathered Harry and Isabella were married, however, the data it contains suggests they we unable to afford their own home because they were living with Isabella's mother, also called Isabella, at 6a Church Steps, Wednesbury.
The photograph below shows the site of Church Steps on 14th February 2026, looking down Church Hill and towards Wednesbury town centre, viewed from Ethelfleda Terrace.
Church Steps, Wednesbury, 14th February 2026.
Church Steps was a steep, domestic housing lined pathway leading upwards from Wednesbury town centre towards the parish church of St Bartholomew. By the 1920s, Wednesbury's historic town centre was declining and much of the housing in the area was crowded and inhabited by the working classes, including Church Steps. This was the community of which Harry and Isabella were a part, the 1921 census records the following facts regarding my family:
The records show that following his demobilisation Harry had secured a job, within the Black Country's still important metalworking industry. He was employed by Garrington's, at the Albert Works on the Willenhall Road in Darlaston. Harry was working as a stamper, in a growing commercial business that at the time was one of the largest hot metal drop forges anywhere in Europe.
Having been established by John Garrington in 1830, Harry’s employer originally produced forged components for the firearms trade. Garrington's acquired the Albert Works in 1912, then in 1919 was the subject of a takeover by the GKN (Guest, Keen and Nettlefolds) group. During the early 1920s the company faced hard times as the post-war recession took hold and resulted in much reduced trade. Following a brief post-war rise in employment which peaked in 1922, Wednesbury and the other Black Country towns experienced a period of high and sustained unemployment. Much of the rest of the country faced the same issues, with rates of unemployment remaining around 10% for most of the decade. At this time, the number of employees at Garrington's reached a low point, inevitably the company struggled financially.
The photograph below was taken on 14th February 2026 and shows what remains of Garrington's at Willenhall Road, Darlaston..
Garrington's, Willenhall Road, Darlaston, 14th February 2026.
Little is known of the detail of Harry's working life, however, many years after Harry finished his final shift at Garrington's his daughter Elsie, my mother, recalled a little of Harry's time with the company. She told me that growing up she saw her father driving a forklift truck outside of Garrington's, at the time cars were rare, so my mother was impressed that her father could drive any vehicle.
The 1921 census shows that through his employment Harry was likely to have been providing for his entire household, his wife, mother-in-law and two young children. During this period there were countless families across the Black Country living in similar circumstances. The family's home at 6a Church Steps would have been rented, so Harry's wages were funding all of the basic needs of his household of five people. My mother was born at 41 Moor Street, Mesty Croft in 1930, this semi-detached council house was likely to have been Harry and Isabella's first home together, with the building itself being newly completed at that time. Hence Harry and Isabella most likely moved into their own home shortly before the time of my mother’s birth.
The family home at Moor Street was one of two hundred and six such properties built in the Mesty Croft area of Wednesbury between 1926 and 1930, when the construction of social housing began to grow significantly. In 1930 the Labour government under Prime Minister Ramsay MacDonald and his Minister of Health, Arthur Greenwood passed the Housing Act of 1930, otherwise known as the 'Greenwood Act', which facilitated the mass clearance of urban slums in many towns and cities. House building was rapid, with Wednesbury having completed construction of its one thousandth property before the end of 1931. By 1930 the properties at Church Steps had been in decline for years, overcrowded and dilapidated housing, with the properties lacking running water and having extremely basic sanitary facilities. In this area of the town the Housing Act of 1930 was much needed, so Harry and his family benefitted from a permanent move to a new property that must have been quite unlike anything they had ever experienced before.