Arthur Sturman was born on the 11th March 1872 in Bunwell to John and Elizabeth Sturman (nee Moss).
The couple were living in Carleton Rode when they married in the autumn of 1852 – and both were weavers at the time. They moved to the Little Green area of Bunwell soon after their marriage where both of their parents and siblings were living. There were very many Sturmans in both Carleton Rode and Bunwell – and in the wider area of South Norfolk – so a great deal of diligence is required to ensure accuracy!
Arthur was the second youngest of eleven children born to John and Elizabeth between 1853 and 1874 – most of whom survived to adulthood. However, soon after Arthur left school (1883/4), his father died aged just 62 and his youngest brother was still a scholar. These were difficult years for the family members still living at home and by the next census, they have split up; Elizabeth is working as a ‘char’ (domestic cleaner) and sharing a house near to the Queen’s Head pub with two other women who were similarly employed. Sons William and Stephen were agricultural labourers staying in rooms nearby – and Arthur was employed as a ‘farm servant’, living on the Turnpike in Carleton Rode with farmer Horace Brown and his family.
During this period, Arthur met Alice Hardy, the daughter of a journeyman tailor – a skilled worker who had completed his apprenticeship and who could trade on his own account. The Hardys had moved from Flordon into Bunwell some twenty years before. Alice spent a few years working as a domestic servant in Mayfair, London, before moving back to Norfolk. She and Arthur were married in Bunwell Church in December 1895.
Their first child, Rosa Adelaide Sturman, was born on the 7th June 1897. Within three years, they had had another daughter, and on the 1901 census, the 7 month old baby Lilian was living with the couple in the Cordwell area of Bunwell. However, their older daughter, Rosa, was not. She can be found just a few doors away, living with her aunt and uncle, Frederick and Elizabeth Houseago (nee Hardy). As we will discover, Lilian, was a sickly child and perhaps explains this temporary situation – by 1911 the family were all together again.
Arthur and Alice were to have two more children, Gerald Claude (always referred to as Claude) born on the 17th May 1906, and Leonard Ziba born 22nd April, 1908 – and known to his neighbours in later life as ‘Lenny’. He was named after one of his mother’s younger brothers, Ziba Hardy, who also fought in the First World War and is also featured on our Roll of Honour board.
The family lived on the Mile Road in Carleton Rode near to the now demolished Farrier’s Arms and the buildings can be seen in a photographs reproduced here. The cottage is still there today, called Lennscott (presumably named by Lenny as he continued to live there after his parent’s deaths).
When we first started our research into those men from Carleton Rode who had died during the First World War, we were wonderfully fortunate that local couple Ronnie and Pearl Burt got in touch with us. Ronnie’s uncle, Fred Burt, had been killed during the Gallipoli campaign and his father, Ernest Burt, had served throughout the war – returning in 1918 from a German prisoner of war camp. Their stories are told elsewhere on this website. However, for many years the Burts had lived next door to Lenny Sturman and looked after him as his health declined.
Little did we know that when we turned our attention to the stories of those who fought and survived the Great War, Lenny’s father would turn out to be one of our ‘names’. We are only sorry that the lovely Ronnie and Pearl are no longer with us to remind us of those evocative stories and tales from long ago.
After Lenny’s death in 1980, as there were no immediate descendants, photographs from the Sturman family album were acquired by local historian and collector, Peter Day. Without his intervention, those ‘snaps’ would probably have been destroyed as forty years ago there was not the nostalgic interest in the past that we share today.
Over the years, Peter’s collection of old photographs, postcards and documents, has been invaluable to history groups in both Bunwell, the village in which he grew up, and neighbouring Carleton Rode.
There are five Sturmans on our Roll of Honour board – two of whom had the first name Arthur. However, we can positively identify this ‘Arthur’ from his Attestation Papers which survive and the Absent Voters Lists for 1918/1919 which give his army unit and address. The photographs of him in his World War 1 uniform (from Peter Day) were annotated with only his nickname, ‘Porky Sturman’, and a look at his army papers provides the answer as well as other information that flesh out his wartime experience.
Conscription had been introduced in January 1916 to include all men between the ages of 18 and 41 – and this was increased to 51 in 1918. However, looking at one of the documents included in the army papers, the correspondence suggests that Arthur volunteered aged 44 in December 1916 before being enlisted in January 1917.
Arthur was 5’ 2” and weighed 166lbs (approx. 12 stones) which probably accounts for the ‘porky’ nickname. His ‘roadman’ skills in civilian life were invaluable to the army and documents in his attestation papers show that the Office for Military Railways was involved in setting up road construction companies for service overseas, and even though he was approaching 45 years of age and medically assessed as ‘B2’, Arthur was snapped up for the Pioneer battalion. (‘B2’ meant you were able to walk 5 miles to work – and could see and hear well enough for ordinary purposes.)
Curiously, although Arthur and Alice had four children, only the two boys are listed in his army papers (and all four were living at home at the time).
He signed up in Attleborough in January 1917 and within a week had been sent to join the Royal Engineers Railway Troops at Bordon Camp in Hampshire. They were part of the BEF and embarked for France less than a month later.
Arthur was given the Service Number 22283 – and he joined the 311th Road Construction Company of the Royal Engineers.
Within 3 days of arriving in France, Arthur was admitted to No 2 General Hospital in Le Havre suffering from tonsilitis and he spent 8 days there before being sent to convalesce nearby. He was back on duty within three weeks.
At the end of 1917, eight months into his service overseas, Arthur was promoted to the rank of Lance Corporal.
Further research is needed to account for the next year, but thanks to Peter Day, we do have four postcards that Arthur wrote to each member of his family on New Year’s Day 1919 from the destroyed city of Arras. These make poignant reading and two are reproduced below (Rosa is not included; we believe that she was living away from home at the time, perhaps in domestic service.)
“My Dear Lily,
Just a few lines to wish you a happy New Year and that you will soon be quite well and strong again – and that 1919 will soon see us all at home again. From you ever-loving Father.”
We believe that this photograph features Lenny with his sister Lilian who was clearly suffering from a disease such as polio (muscle weakness and paralysis) which was prevalent in the UK during the first half of the 20th century until a vaccine had been developed. Although the disease was believed to have been around for hundreds, if not thousands, of years, it did not reach epidemic proportions until the 20th century. Click here to read about this disease.
(Lilian did survive – although we do not know whether she lived with any permanent disability. She died aged 39 just months before the outbreak of the Second World War and was buried with her maternal grandparents in Bunwell Churchyard.)
Arthur returned home from the Great War in the spring of 1919. He went back to working as a roadman for Norfolk County Council.
In 1924, his oldest daughter, Rosa, married Leonard Arthur Kiddle, a gardener, in Carleton Rode Church and moved away to the Garvestone area. They had a son the following year, Raymond, who at 14 was working at the local brush factory. Rosa died in 1979.
Arthur’s oldest son, Claude, became a carpenter and married Elsie Maud Long in Watton Church in May 1931 and they lived the rest of their lives in the town. Claude died in 1974 and is buried, along with his wife and mother-in-law, in Watton churchyard.
Lilian and Lenny remained living at home with Arthur and Alice on the Mile Road in Carleton Rode.
During the war, Lenny – described as ‘incapacitated’ on the 1939 Register – joined the local volunteer defence unit and is shown proudly wearing his Home Guard uniform on the photograph shown here – middle row, fourth from the left.
Alice died in 1950 and is buried in Bunwell Churchyard alongside her daughter, some of her siblings and parents. Arthur is also buried with them – he died three years later, 4th May, 1953.
Lenny died in May 1980.