Jasper Francis Royds was born 19 Oct 1896 at the Old Parsonage in Fulbeck. His parents were Edmund Royds and Rachel Louisa (nee Fane, of Fulbeck Hall). They married in Fulbeck in 1889 and lived at the Manor House, Fulbeck until moving to Caythorpe in 1900; firstly at the Corner House (later Dr Dodson’s home and now Caythorpe Residential Home), then at Holy Cross.
Edmund Royds, a partner in a London law firm, was the MP for the Sleaford Division from 1910 to 1922. He joined the Lincolnshire Yeomanry in 1902. During the First World War he raised and commanded the 2nd and 3rd line Yeomanry units and in 1917 Colonel Royds became county commandant of the Lincolnshire Volunteer Forces.
Before the war his elder son, Anthony Fane Royds, seems to have been training to be a priest in Norfolk. He enlisted as a private in 3/1st (training reserve) Battalion Lincolnshire Yeomanry in Nov 1915. He did not serve abroad and was discharged in Feb 1917 as mentally unfit for war service.
Jasper Francis Royds joined the Royal Navy in September 1914. By 1917 he was a sub lieutenant serving on HMS Arrogant, a depot ship for submarines and motor launches in Dover harbor.
On 9th November 1917 he’d been home on leave at Holy Cross for 10 days, prior to attending a course, when he was fatally injured in a road accident. He was riding his motorbike up the hill at Wellingore as a Royal Navy car was driving slowly down the hill. The car stopped at the bend as looked to the driver as if the motorbike might try to pass on the wrong side; but then Royds changed his mind and turned sharply across the road, hitting a grass bank and smashing the headlight as he was thrown off the bike. He was taken to the chemist shop in Wellingore before being moved to Caythorpe. He died a few hours later of a ruptured liver. He was 21.
He was buried the next week in the family vault in Fulbeck Churchyard, with a guard of honour provided by Royal Naval Air Service personnel from the airfield on Wellingore Heath.
After the war (around 1920) Edmund and Rachel moved to Stubton Hall. In 1939 they celebrated their golden wedding there. Edmund died at Stubton in Mar 1945 (aged 85). Anthony, who’d been living with them, died that June (age 55).
