Driver William (Billy) Abbott

M2/047620 MT Section of the Army Service Corps

Born 17th Mar 1888, Helton. Died Aug 1975 Aged 87 Penrith

Son of David and Ann (nee Bell) Abbott, The Township and Goldrill House Patterdale

Husband of Annie Backhouse. Lived at Millcroft Glenridding

William was the eldest son of David Abbott, a Stonemason, and his wife Ann (nee Bell). His parents arrived in Patterdale from Helton around 1889, living in the Township. Sadly, Ann died on the 11th October 1895, leaving David with four young children to look after. Alongside William, the eldest, were Henrietta (born 1890), Thomas (1892) and Mary Olive (1894). Around February 1898, his father married again, to Rachel Rucastle in Kendal. They lived for a while in the Heysham area but by 1905 had moved back to Patterdale, living at Goldrill House, where William was working as a Stonemason alongside his father, and where in 1905 Rachel had given birth to Ruth, a step-sister to William. They had probably acquired Goldrill House from the family of Henry Thwaites. It was a grand building (see below) and in addition to the family they have a live in servant, Sarah Hannah Bellas, as well as a lodger, Ann Isabel Moon, who was a school teacher at Patterdale School. On the 12th December 1911, William married Annie Backhouse at St Patrick's Church, and they moved into the Township in Patterdale.  In 1915 his father was still living at Goldrill House but he then sold it to the family of Tom Little.

Before the war William was a coach driver, working for the Pears Family who operated from Crookabeck Farm. He used to drive the four-in-hand horse-drawn coaches over Kirkstone Pass, and indeed it is likely that he was the last person ever to do so. William travelled to London to enlist in the Army Service Corps on the 2nd February 1915 and was immediately billeted at the ASC Transport Training Depot at Grove Park (in what had been the Greenwich Workhouse). Within a month he had joined the British Expeditionary Force in France, where he stayed until the 13th April 1919. His service records show that he was a Motor Lorry Driver but give no details of his attachments or locations until 1919 when he was driving Mobile X-Ray Unit and attached to the Royal Army Medical Corps in Namur, Belgium - who were presumably carrying out medical checks on servicemen before de-mobilisation. William finally de-mobbed on the 10th May 1919.

After the war he was chauffeur for Mr Thomas Bowness at the Ullswater Hotel and for some years before he retired he drove a van for the Bero flour firm. He also let apartments at West Side, Glenridding until at least 1929. He continued to drive and taught many of the local youngsters to drive, including Freda Cox, niece of John William Hicks, and was by all accounts still tearing around the roads in his eighties. His wife Annie died in 1966 and William in 1975, they are buried together in Patterdale Churchyard. He was a staunch supporter of Glenridding Wesleyan Chapel and as the Herald  reported after his funeral “ he was one of Glenridding’s best-known and best-liked personalities, always ready to lend a helping hand where he could, and he will be greatly missed”.

In terms of his other family members, his younger sister Mary Olive had died aged just 9 in 1903. We father and step mother moved back to Kendal, possibly during World War One, where his father died on the 23 July 1931 at Westmorland County Hospital aged 65. Rachel stayed in Kendal until her death aged 88 in 1956. We believe his sister Henrietta married Edwin Shaw in Kendal in 1918, and Ruth married Charles Baker, also in Kendal in 1930. We believe his brother Thomas may have moved to Lancashire, where died in 1949 aged 58.

If you can add anything to William or his family’s story please contact us.

Goldrill House in Patterdale - likely to be between the Wars. It is now the Patterdale YHA.