William Henry Attwood

Name and Rank: Bombardier William Henry Attwood

Service Number: 95769

Served with: A Battery, 53rd Brigade, Royal Field Artillery

Killed in Action: 24 July 1916

Commemorated on local memorials at: Clock Tower & Deepcar St. John

Buried / Commemorated at: Quarry Cemetery, Mountauban, France

This was one of the most difficult names to research because the name Attwood is not a local one. The local war memorials list him simply as W. Attwood. The only W. Attwood listed on the Commonwealth War Graves Commission website who matches the rank of Bombardier in the R.F.A. is William Henry Attwood of the 53rd Brigade, service number 95769.  He was killed in Action on the 24th July 1916 during the First Battle of the Somme and is buried in Quarry Cemetery, Mountauban, France.  The records point to him being the son of Henry and Selina Attwood nee Willis.  Henry Attwood came from Gloucestershire and Selina from either Bramley in Yorkshire, or Sheffield.  They married in Richmond and lived in Gloucestershire before moving to Rotherham between 1892-5.  I can find no evidence at all that they ever came to Stocksbridge.  The website Soldiers Died in the Great War gives William Henry’s birthplace as Sheffield, and his place of enlistment as Stockbridge [sic].  He had a brother, Edward, a Private in the 1/4 York & Lancaster who died of wounds in October 1917.  The only Attwood to feature in the local records was a lady called Caroline, whose death was registered in the Wortley Registration District in 1893.  Further investigation proved that she only moved into this area between 1881 and her death, to live with her daughter Jane Attwood, who had married Thomas Stokes in 1870.  This family had their roots in Shropshire; Jane and Thomas moved to Deepcar in the 1870s.  I cannot find a connection between them and the Gloucestershire Attwoods.