The A. Parr on the Caythorpe memorial is probably 15325 Private Arthur Parr of 1st Battalion, Coldstream Guards.
Arthur Parr was born in Barkston in about 1886. His father William was a carpenter from a family of wheelwrights in the village. His mother Sarah (nee Jackson) was from Syston.
By 1891 the family had moved to
South Rauceby where William was a foreman joiner on the Rauceby Hall
estate. In 1901 Arthur was 14 and living-in as a groom and general help
at a cottage next to the Bustard Inn.
In 1909 Alfred married Alice
Beatrice Wilkes in Wakefield. They lived at 69 Haddingley Hill, Sandal
(just south of Wakefield) and had 3 children. He worked at the Wakefield
Industrial Society Ltd before volunteering for the Coldstream Guards in
Jan 1915.
He became a dispatch rider and was awarded the Military Medal in1918 for taking dispatches under very heavy fire.
Private Parr died of wounds on 5th November 1918 aged 32. We don’t know when he was injured, but his unit took part in the Battle of the Selle (17-25th October) and then in the Battle of the Sambre (4th Nov). It’s most likely that he was injured in the latter action – the last full-scale battle fought by the British Army in WW1 (and in which Wilfred Owen was killed). Alfred was buried at Villers-Pol Communal Cemetery.
Why the Caythorpe Memorial? Although Arthur had moved to Wakefield, his father and sisters were still in Lincolnshire. In 1901 his sister Edith had been in service at Caythorpe Court. In 1911 his other sister Sarah was a servant for Edmund Royds at Holy Cross in Caythorpe. In 1925 Arthur’s cousin Alfred Parr was working in Caythorpe when he was taken ill and later died (he’d served with 4th Battalion, Lincolnshire Regiment throughout the war before being invalided out in 1918). The records are incomplete, so it’s possible that William, Edith and/or Sarah lived in Caythorpe at the end on the war.
Postscript. By the start of the war his parents had moved to 4 Millfield Terrace, New Sleaford. His mother, Sarah died there (of dementia) in 1914, after which William took in lodgers.
Sarah married Thomas Sewell in 1921. William died at her house at 91 Harlaxton Road, Grantham in 1935. She married again in 1939 and died in 1966.
