Edited by Trevor McFarlane

There surely can be no more of a tragic family in Cheslyn Hay’s history than Ann’s mother’s family – the Farnells.

Elijah Farnell was born into a mining family in 1876 and was one of seven sons and a daughter at the family home at 27 Low Street. Elijah was exempted from the First World War because he was a miner but all of his six brothers volunteered. Edwin (b1894) was deemed unfit for service but the other five all saw action but only two survived the outcome. Samson (b 1877) a miner at Hawkins’, was the first to die, ironically after being allowed a short pass ‘behind the lines’ to relax and to sample the French wine and cuisine. Unfortunately the wine turned out to be poisoned and Samson died an agonising and prolonged death back in the trenches on 23rd December 1915. George (b1887) was tragically killed on his nineteenth birthday 4th March 1916 and Richard (b1890) was also killed on the Somme on 2nd July 1916. After receiving a letter from home informing him that he was about to become a father, Richard stood up waving the letter declaring the good news when a German sniper picked him out.

The one daughter, Harriet (b1875), had a horrendous accident slipping on the ice as a young girl whilst fetching the customary early bucket of water from the Town Well. She fractured her skull and, as in those days, was classed as an ‘Imbecile’ and she lived out her life in the Burntwood Mental Hospital, dying on 11th September 1925.

The Farnells always had abilities that suggested they could have made more of their lives if born in a different era. Elijah’s father, John, was a member of the School Board at the Cheslyn Hay School and John’s youngest brother, Tom, was the Assistant Headmaster there. These traits were borne out in Elijah’s family of five children at 17 Cross Street, particularly so in a remarkable and very poignant poem by Ann’s mother, Ellen, to commemorate the Armistice Day of 1918. Ellen had just lost three beloved uncles and was just eleven years of age.

Come boys and girls, you’ve heard the gun

And that means some real good fun

But in the joy, revere the dead

Whose precious blood was nobly shed.

Some mothers will think in sorrow

For their sons’ lives, we did borrow

To fight for King, country and home

In a foreign land, they died alone.

By Ellen Farnell – 1918

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