Over the years, Leamingtonians have become accustomed to having retired Army and Navy Officers of senior rank as near-neighbours. At the outbreak of the First World War, one of the town’s most respected citizens was General Augustus Goodfellow; a former Commandant of the Corps of Royal Engineers. The General was held in high esteem locally … Read more

Harry Herbert Clarke B Squadron 6th (Iniskilling) Dragoons 7th Cavalry Brigade, 3rd Cavalry Division “A particularly fine and dashing soldier” Harry Herbert Clarke was born in Canterbury in 1872, and enlisted in 1st (Canterbury) Troop, A Squadron, Royal East Kent (Yeomanry) Mounted Rifles at the outbreak of the 2nd South African [Boer] War in October … Read more

Lieutenant General Charles Augustus Goodfellow V.C., C.B., Victoria Cross and Companion – Order of the Bath was born in Essex on 29th November 1836 . At the height of his military service Charles Goodfellow was Colonel Commandant of the Royal Engineers; in fact he was the third member of his family to be appointed Commandant of the … Read more

Bertram Saxelbye Evers, “B” Company, 9th [Service] Battalion [Prince of Wales’s Own] West Yorkshire Regiment, 32nd Brigade 3 November 1891-14 September 1916 Bertram Saxelbye Evers was born on the 3rd November 1891 in Aldborough, North Yorkshire, the youngest of the ten surviving children of Rev. Edwin and Mrs Saxelbye Evers. When he was not either … Read more

  The ‘Leamington Spa Courier’ newspaper dated 20 December 1918 described Henry Tandey as ‘a hero of the old berserk type’. Never were truer words written about a Leamington man who was the most decorated British private soldier to return from the battlefields of the First World War. Early life Henry Tandey was born on … Read more

The British Army has engaged in many heroic actions over the years but few have achieved such legendary status as one during the Crimean War in October 1854. This action,  described by The Times reporter present as ‘an atrocity without parallel’ came to be known as The Charge of the Light Brigade and moved the … Read more

  For a comparatively small town, Leamington Spa can lay claim to five recipients of the Victoria Cross, the world’s most coveted medal for gallantry.  The town war memorial on The Parade bears the name of one of these brave men, Arthur Kilby VC, the only one of the local recipients to lose his life … Read more

During the Second World War, the Free Czechoslovak Army (FCA) was based in Leamington Spa and a memorial fountain in the shape of a parachute in the town’s Jephson Gardens records their stay. It also commemorates one of the most daring undercover missions of the war which was carried out by Czechoslovak  paratroop agents. The … Read more