A little bit more on that Burnley mystery

Officers of the B.V.T.C, 1914

Just when you think you are getting to the bottom of a mystery the search takes off in the most unexpected of ways.

Yesterday I was trying to work out what a Manchester man who lived in Stockport was doing in Burnley at the outbreak of the Great War.

He was George Davison who came from Manchester, started his married life in Hulme and went on to live in Romiley in Stockport.

But in 1914 he was in Burnley long enough to be associated with the Burnley Volunteer Training Corps.

And by the end of that year he had enlisted and spent the war in Woolwich, Ireland and later the Western Front.

George's badge, 1914

That he was somehow connected with the Corps is evidenced from two pictures of the unit parading outside St John the Evangelist in Worstholme and an enamelled badge of the Volunteers with his name and the inscription George Davison Company Commander A Coy 1914.

All of which was further confirmed by a postcard with a Burnley address wishing his son Duncan a happy birthday.

The card was sent to Fairholme Road.

Now I couldn’t work out from the handwriting the location of the house but Craig Simpson could and went one better by contacting Burnley Library who then added to the mystery because “all our map, directory, census and electoral registration records show that Fairholme Road was not built until 1922.

There was a Fairholme Street, but the only records we have for this in 1914 show only odd numbers (1, 3 and 5).

Further investigation shows that this is actually one and the same road ....... it changed its name after the opposite row (of even numbers) was built in the early 20's (there is a continuation of residency at Number 5 which can clearly be followed).

The postcard, 1915

So, to clarify – there wasn't a 4 Fairholme (or Fair Holme as it's sometimes written) anything (either Rd or St) in 1914.  Which quite clearly raises more questions than it answers!”

At which point I confess I had not looked too closely at the postcard because the post mark dated it to April 1915, by which time George was in Ireland.

Earlier in the month his wife Nellie had been in Stockport where she seems to have been for most of that year.

But the correspondence for the four years of the war show that she moved out of the cottage in Romiley, spent time back in Hulme and was also for a time living close to George when he was in Woolwich and Ireland.

The family circa 1916

And it may also be that the total absence of any letters in the collection for 1917 was because she had relocated to be near him.

Not that this solves the mystery of Burnley but it does open up the intriguing question of how many other married women followed their husbands to live near them.

Train travel got progressively more difficult during the Great War and there was a continual hike in the cost of rented accommodation but if Nellie did it and did it with her young son others may have also done so.

As for Burnley the address may have been wrong, but that said it did get to Nellie and Duncan because it was in the collection.

Badge, 1914

So I don’t know.

But the family were somewhere in Burnley both in 1914 and again in 1915 which calls for more investigation.
The obvious first step will be to check out Nellie and Georges’ siblings and see who they married and if there was a connection with the town.

And there will also be the Volunteers.

Somewhere there must be a list of who was in the Corps and with that will come more information on the unit itself which will shed local light on the work of those men too old or unfit to enlist but who felt the need to serve.

Now I have every confidence that David and his colleagues at the library and Craig will in the fullness of time turn up more.

Pictures, officers of the Burnley Volunteer Training Corps, the badge of the B.V.T.C., that postcard, and George Nellie & Duncan from the collection of David Harrop