Hugh Anthony Rupert Crookham was born in Brighton in 1892, son of William Thomas Crookham, who became Vicar of Haddenham, Cambridgeshire the following year. His mother, Beatrice, was the daughter of William Emery, Archdeacon and Canon of Ely Cathedral. All three of his sisters were born in Haddenham: Elfrida in 1895, Cecily in 1899 and Barbara in 1902, but in 1905 his father moved on to become Vicar of Wisbech. Hugh was probably educated at home for a few years (a governess is listed in the family in the 1901 census), before being sent to board at prep school in Bedfordshire, then Felstead School in Essex.

He won a scholarship to Jesus College Cambridge, and was probably about to start his final year when war broke out. He signed up on 23rd September 1914, and was gazetted 2nd Lieutenant in the Cambridgeshire Regiment shortly after, arriving in France 19th June 1915 as a full Lieutenant.

On the 3rd July, only a week after going into the trenches, he was reported in the battalion war diary as seriously wounded in the head by a rifle grenade which also wounded two other men. While being treated for the wound at Le Treport Hospital he developed meningitis, and died on 3rd August. His mother was able to visit and to talk to him before his death, but his father was by then an Army Chaplain serving in Egypt, and unable to travel to see him. He was posthumously awarded his BA degree from Cambridge.

He was buried in Le Treport Cemetery and is commemorated on the Memorial Board in Holy Trinity Church and also by a battlefield cross in St Peter and St Paul Church in Wisbech.

Rosemary Gorman