Herbert Matthew Greenwood was born on the 6th June 1888 in Fersfield, the second child (and oldest son) of Matthew Bennett Greenwood and his wife Rhoda Ann (nee Whiterod) who came from farming stock in the Garvestone and Mattishall area.
After their marriage in 1885, Matthew and Rhoda moved further east to Fersfield in south Norfolk and farmed on their own account. During their first fifteen years together, they had ten children – seven daughters and three sons (all of whom survived to adulthood) – and built a successful farming business. From Fersfield they moved to Occupation Farm in Morley St Peter, then Hill Farm in East Harling before finally buying The Ashes in Carleton Rode in 1913. However, they didn’t move in until 1916 and by this time Matthew was in failing health.
Herbert, who would have left school around 1902, worked on his father’s farm – as would his younger brothers, Walter and Bennett (known as John), some years later.
Herbert served in the First World War. Walter didn’t – although he would have been old enough – and given his father’s serious ill health during this period, he may have been exempted from military service as farming was essential for the country’s food supply. John was too young to fight. However, one of his sisters, Laura, joined the Women’s Army Auxillary Corps (QMAAC). Her story is told elsewhere on this website.
Although Herbert’s attestation papers do not survive, his medal card gives us some information about his military service, and we are grateful to the Greenwood family for many of the photographs published here.
Herbert joined the Norfolk Regiment and was sent to fight in the Gallipoli campaign in August 1915. The 4th and 5th Battalions embarked for Gallipoli from Liverpool in July 1915 and landed at Suvla Bay on the 10th August 1915. There they engaged in several actions against the Turks.
When Gallipoli was abandoned in December 1915 due to severe casualties from both combat and disease, the Norfolks were sent to Alexandria, Egypt. At the beginning of the following year, they were engaged in the defence of the Suez Canal. Herbert was transferred to the 163rd company of the Machine Gun Corps which formed in Egypt in May 1916 and in which he served for the rest of the war. There are some very evocative photographs featured here of Herbert riding camels, both in battledress and desert uniform, and posing in front of those most iconic of Egyptian landmarks; the Pyramids and the Sphinx.
Herbert survived the war and was demobbed in April 1919. By the time he had returned to his parent’s home at The Ashes in Carleton Rode, his father was seriously ill and died within a few months that same year. His brothers, Walter and John were both living and working on the family farm with their mother, but farming had been going through a very difficult period during the previous 50 years and whilst corn prices for farmers had been guaranteed during the First World War, the years following it saw those protections withdrawn. Agriculture was pushed back into depression. Read more about this here.
For the Greenwoods, only recently settled in Carleton Rode, great changes were afoot. Walter remained at The Ashes whilst the youngest of the brothers, John, went to farm at West Carr in Attleborough. Herbert picked up his life working with his brother Walter and within eighteen months had married Hilda, the daughter of a prominent local farmer, Frederick W Brown of Manor Farm, Tibenham – although interestingly the couple were not married in her home village but in All Saints’ Church, Carleton Rode in October 1921.
Herbert and Hilda moved to Well Green in East Tuddenham where their son (Malcolm Bennett Brown) was born a year later, and they remained there for the next four years. By 1926 they had returned to Carleton Rode, living at The Gates on Rode Lane (Hilda’s father farmed land at nearby Kendal Lodge during the same period). However, this was clearly not a satisfactory arrangement as within two years, the family had moved to Thorpe Farm in West Harling – not to be confused with East Harling, the nearby prosperous village where the Greenwoods had lived ten years before. West Harling was very different – a sparsely populated area further east towards Thetford. They did not stay very long – and this time took the momentous decision to emigrate to Canada; Herbert went out first in March 1929 and Hilda, with six-year-old Malcolm, joined him three months later.
This was not entirely a step into the unknown – Hilda’s younger half-brother, Harry Peck Brown, had emigrated some fifteen years before, early in 1914. He had begun to make a successful life farming in Saskatchewan, although he too fought during the First World War, enlisting in Canada in 1916. He arrived in England but suffered serious bronchial problems, was eventually diagnosed with TB and discharged back to Canada for treatment. Happily, he recovered and resumed farming in Lashburn, Saskatchewan. He was soon joined by his younger brother Alec (at the beginning of 1920) and the following year married Alice Maud Greenwood, the younger sister of his brother-in-law, Herbert!
Harry and Lucy had four children by the time the couple made a trip back to Britain in 1929 to visit their parents and siblings’ families in Norfolk. Indeed, the passenger manifests show that when Harry, Alice and children returned to Canada at the end of March, Herbert Greenwood was on the same sailing.
Herbert died in Carruthers, Saskatchewan in January 1945 and is buried in Carruthers Hillcrest Cemetery. Hilda later remarried.
We know very little about Herbert and Hilda’s life in Canada, save the following which is taken from an online obituary of their son, Malcolm.
GREENWOOD, Malcolm Bennett – It is with great sadness the family of Malcolm Greenwood announces the passing of loving husband, Dad and Poppa on January 4, 2010.
He will be dearly missed by his wife of 58 years, Karleen, daughters – Bev (Cary), Sharon (Don) and Diane (Gordie), and grandchildren – Kristi, Steve, Tara and Colin.
Born in England in 1922 and transplanted to Saskatchewan at the ripe old age of 6, Malcolm spent his youth on a farm with his cousins – Eric, Daphne, Phylis, Dorothy and Flo. At the age of 18, he joined the Navy to fight in WWII. He moved to Kelowna in 1948, where he and Karleen built their home and raised their family. Always busy, whether working on a project in his workshop, gardening, winemaking, square dancing or camping in his RV, he made the most of life. More than anything, Malcolm will be missed for his sense of humor and his ability to tell stories.
We hope that the descendants of Malcolm – and indeed his cousins (Harry and Alice’s children mentioned above) – will get in touch and tell us some of those stories!