Today please pause and remember Ernest Vickers a former pupil of Minster school, Southwell killed in action on this day 100 years ago - 26th January 1917.

 

Ernest  attended the Minster school from 1906. In those days the school took borders but Ernest was a day boy who lived on Westgate in Southwell. He was the only son of Wistow, a coal merchant and President of the Southwell traders association, and Rachel Vickers and had two sisters Dorothy and Elsie.

After leaving the school he got a job with the London and Smith Bank in Market Place, Newark (now the NatWest in the same location). He enlisted in 1915 with the 29th Royal Fusiliers.

On the 26th January 1917 in action near Thiepval on the Somme Second Lieutenant Vickers was killed but his body was never recovered. With no grave he is listed on the Thiepval Memorial Arch along with 72,246 missing British Empire servicemen who died in the Battles of the Somme of the First World War between 1915 and 1918, with no known grave. He is commemorated on the original Minster School memorial in what is now the Minster Visitors Centre, this white marble tablet commemorates 22 former Minster school pupils who died in WW1. The tablet was left in situ when the school moved to new buildings and a wooden memorial plaque is cited in the new Minster school buildings which list former pupils who died in both the First and Second World Wars . His parents installed a single light window in Holy Trinity church, Westgate, Southwell, in memory of their son:                                      'To the Glory of God and the loving memory of Ernest Charles Vickers, 2nd Lieut 7th Batt. Essex Regt. Killed in action in France 26th January 1917 aged 22 years, this window is dedicated by his sorrowing parents. Greater love hath no man than this that a man lay down his life for his friends.’

andrew adam