Robert Benjamin Grayson
Robert Benjamin Grayson was born in 1891, the first child of Benjamin Thomas Cranmer Grayson, a solicitor’s clerk, and his wife Minnie (nee Kay). At this time the family were living on Wolseley Road at Heeley. Benjamin would have worked in the city centre, quite possibly travelling on the horse-drawn tram service to work – electric trams didn’t come to Sheffield until a few years later. Five years later Robert had a baby brother Cranmer Kay Grayson, born in 1896.
By 1901, the family had moved to Glen Road at Nether Edge, an area which would then have been quite well-to-do whilst still being reasonably close to the city. Another son, Gilbert, was born in 1907 and Benjamin was clearly moving up in the world.
By the time of the 1911 Census, the Graysons had moved to Beech Villa, Abbeydale Road South, Ecclesall and Robert, then nineteen years of age, was studying law at university and still living at home. He qualified on the eve of war in 1914, and was soon to find himself in uniform. Joining up in December 1914 and serving first as an enlisted man with the RNVR where he was promoted to Petty Officer, Robert transferred to the Royal Field Artillery in 1916. He showed either ability, bravery or a talent for not getting killed enough to be commissioned as a second lieutenant in 1916, and he transferred again, this time to the Royal Garrison Artillery.
Robert was demobilised in 1919 and returned to Sheffield, and to the law practice where he had first been articled, Arnold Slater’s. He subsequently set up in business on his own account in Figtree Lane on 1st December 1925. A sociable and cheerful man, he soon attracted a clientele, but he remained a sole practitioner until after the Second World War when his two sons qualified and joined the practice. The family moved to Brook Hall, Mickey Lane, Totley in 1931. Robert died in 1976; his son Gordon continued to live at Brook Hall until recently.
Graysons is a name well known in the legal history of Sheffield. The firm merged with neighbours Watson Esam under the name Graysons WE but has now returned to its original name and still conducts its business from offices on Paradise Square and has a branch in Chesterfield.
Robert’s brother Cranmer had an equally colourful experience as a soldier in the Great War. In 1916 he joined first of all the King’s Royal Rifle Corps, then was transferred to the Yorks and Lancaster Regiment before moving on to the newly formed Machine Gun Corps. He ultimately became a Lieutenant in the Machine Gun Corps and it is possible that he was commanding not Field Gunners but the new branch of the Army: the Heavy Tanks, alias 'the Water Carriers from Mesopotamia', since there was a section called the Heavy Machine Gun Corps.
Cranmer also survived the Great War. In 1937 he married Florence Atkinson and they lived on Main Avenue in Totley. He died at the age of 80 in Bakewell.