James Percy Cockshott

                                   Roll of Honour, Totley Rise Methodist Church 

Inside the Totley Rise Methodist Church there is a Roll of Honour commemorating the soldiers from its congregation who served their king and country during the Great War.

On it there are 28 names and, for all but one of them, the soldier's regiment is recorded in the next column. The exception is David Cockshott for whom 'killed in action' is written under 'Remarks', yet he appears on no war memorial in our area and no record of a mortally wounded soldier of that name is to be found. It is a simple mistake, like so many on memorials across the country. The roll should in fact honour Lance-Corporal James Percy Cockshott who, at the age of 21, was killed in action on 11 September 1918.

James Percy Cockshott was born in Sheffield in 1897. His father, William Cockshott, was born in Morecambe, Lancashire in about 1861, the son of a grocer. By 1881 William had moved to Gorton, Manchester where he became an apprentice locomotive engine fitter before marrying Jane ("Jennie") Swaine on 1 September 1885 at St. Andrew's Church, Sharrow. Jennie was one of at least 12 children born to Henry Swaine, a farmer from Burnt Hill, Bradfield, and his wife Ann Fairest.

The first of William and Jennie's four children, Jennie Swaine Cockshott, was born in 1887 in Ashton-upon-Mersey, Cheshire. A second child, William Unwin Cockshott was born in 1890 in Sheffield and by the time of the 1891 Census, William and Jennie and their two children were living at 86 Brincliffe Edge Road. William was by this time a mechanical engineer with his own business and was prosperous enough to employee a general servant. James Percy was the next child to be born in 1897 before the family moved home again to Brook Lynn, Grove Road, Totley Rise, where daughter Dorothy, also known as Dorothea, was born in 1900.

                                  Gatepier to Brook Lynn, Grove Road. The house was demolished in 1978.

Sadly William and Jennie died within a few weeks of each other both aged just 44, Jennie on Christmas Eve 1904 and William on 9 February 1905. Parish records show that Jennie was buried at Christ Church, Dore on 28 December 1904 and William on 11 February 1905 although no headstone can be found. We have not seen the death certificates. A brief newspaper announcement stated that William had died suddenly at the Sheffield Royal Infirmary. Brooklynn was advertised for sale by Walter Waller Marrison, local builder and shopkeeper who was presumably the owner between April and June 1905. The Cockshott family furniture was sold at auction at the City Saleroom, George Street on 23 May 1905.

At the time of their father's death, Jennie would have been aged 17, William 15, James 7 and Dorothea 5. Jennie had been educated at the boarding school of the Society of Friends, at Ackworth, near Pontefract, Yorkshire. In the 1911 Census she was working as a lady nurse in Altrincham, Cheshire. She later became a bank clerk in London. Jennie Swaine Cockshott never married and died in Harrow, Middlesex, in 1970 at the age of 83. 

James Percy Cockshott went to live with his father's younger brother Samuel who had become an inspecting engineer whilst living in Morecambe but by 1905 he was living in Eaglescliffe, Durham with his wife Marianna (nee Robinson) and their two children Ronald and Kathleen. In the 1911 Census James is shown as a 13 year old boarder at the Friends School, Great Ayton, near Middlesbrough. James's army service record has not survived but it would appear that he enlisted in London and was formerly of the King's Own Hussars before being transferred to the 2nd Battalion of the Oxfordshire and Buckinghamshire Light Infantry. James was killed on 11 September 1918, during the 'Advance to Victory', a series of battles fought in Picardy and Artois during the last few months of the war when the Allied Forces successfully pushed the German Army eastwards as far as Mons over the Belgian border. James's body was never recovered and he is commemorated on the Vis-en-Artois Memorial along with 9,846 other officers and men who were killed in the period from 8th August 1918 to 11th November 1918. James is also commemorated on the parish war memorial at Eaglescliffe & Preston on Tees and remembered on a memorial at the Friends School at Great Ayton. 

William Unwin Cockshott became a traveller for an engineering business and lived in lodgings in Eaglescliffe at the time of the 1911 Census. He married Hilda Eliza Pearson in Middlesbrough in 1924 and lived in the Stainton district of that town until his death in 1934 at the same age as his parents, 44. There were no children from the marriage as far as we are aware.

                                   Harry Leslie Higgins (left) and John Bernard Higgins (right)

Dorothea Cockshott went to live in Harrogate with her aunt Anne Cockshott. In 1924 she married Harry Leslie ("Laddy") Higgins, a professional cricketer who played for Worcestershire C.C.C. They married at Edgbaston Old Church in Warwickshire as it was the church in which the bridegroom's parents, William Higgins and Sarah Ann Jones, had been married in 1881. The bride was given away by her uncle Samuel Cockshott and the best man was the groom's older brother John Bernard ("Bunny") Higgins, who also played county cricket for Worcestershire and umpired in a test match in India in 1934. Dorothea and Harry appear to have had no children. They both died in Malvern, Worcestershire, Dorothea in 1977 and her husband two years later.

We would like to thank the following people for their help with this article: Neill James, great-grandson of Samuel Cockshott; Tim Jones, Heritage and History Co-ordinator,Worcestershire CCC Supporters Association; and Denis Rigg, North East War Memorials Project.