Introduction: Nutt or Peet

Edward Nutt was born on June 14th 1898. His birth was registered in Finedon, Northamptonshire as Thomas Alfred Edward Peet , the son of Sarah Elizabeth Claypole and her second husband, Albert. By 1911, Sarah and her children were living in Bedford with Arthur Nutt, a retired boot and shoe manufacturer from Finedon.

Edward's War

Edward enlisted as a gunner with the Royal Field Artillery in 1915 when he was two months short of his seventeenth birthday. He served in France before transfer to the Ypres-Yser canal north of the town of Ypres in August 1917. He became ill that September and was repatriated to the No 5 War Hospital in Exeter. Medical records from the National Archives include his discharge with a 100% disability by the Army Medical Board. He returned to his parent's home and died in June 1919.

Contact with the Commonwealth War Graves Commission

The Commonwealth War Graves Commission contains a commemoration to Gunner E Nutt with little information other than his service number and date of death. The cemetery at Leigh on Sea in Essex was identified and indicated that there were 27 First World War casualties buried there. At the time (February 2017), the website contained an image suggesting that there was an area in the cemetery set aside with classical headstones. Further records though indicated that Edward's burial and memorial were both deemed private and so did not share one of these grave markers.

This cemetery is now closed. However a study of the aerial view on Google Earth failed to reveal any evidence of war grave headstones or the commemorative cross. (It is suggested actually to be a photograph of a cemetery in Belgium and has since apparently been removed from the CWGC website)

Contact with The War Graves Photographic Project

We next examined the photographs displayed on The War Graves Photographic Project website. Indeed there was a single image (a photograph by John Coleman) showing a close up of the marble base of a memorial with an inscription to Edward on its edge.

We contacted Southend-on-Sea Borough Council who had responsibility for the cemetery. They confirmed that the grave site originally consisted of three marble slabs, a superstructure in the form of a cross, two vases and kerbing. The cross was taken down some years previously as it was unsafe and now lay on the ground behind the marble slabs. They sent us a map of the graveyard, indicating where Edward's grave was situated. They also confirmed that Arthur Nutt and Sarah Elizabeth Claypole were buried in the same plot.

We then used the request facility available on the Billion Graves website to ask for local help. Members Malcolm Duncan and Julie Wilson both offered to visit the site to take photographs. They examined the memorial from all sides revealing further dedications on the slab and on the base of the cross including the one to Edward's mother.

Reinstating the memorial

Once our research was (we thought) complete, we decided that it would be fitting to see whether we could restore the memorial to its former state. After consultation with a local stonemason, he agreed to take on the task. The marble bases were excavated and all the stonework was cleaned. It became apparent that the base of the memorial had subsided into the ground for, when this task was complete, the memorial inscription to Arthur Nutt also became clear.

The renewed memorial is shown in the photograph at the head of this article.

Continued in column 2...

Please contact us

If you have any questions or comments about the information on this site in general, or you have further information regarding this article, please Get in touch by leaving a message in our Guestbook. If you don't want the message to be added to the Guestbook, just say that in your text. We look forward to hearing from you.

Added: December 31st 2017

A Brief background note [- J.W.]

When I was young my Grandmother talked to me about her family and when she spoke about her brothers she said that they were her half brothers. They were referred to as Edward (Teddy) Nutt and Arthur Nutt. I had never heard the name Albert Edward Peet before I started looking into my family history. And nobody in the family knew anything about him. I just knew that Sarah Elizabeth Claypole had had three husbands and one was Ivett and one was Nutt.

Also I couldn't find out what happened to Edward after 1911. He just seemed to disappear and nobody had talked to me about him. I wasn't told that he died young. When I asked my Mother if she knew anything about him, she said she didn't. The only thing that stuck in her mind was the photograph she had been shown of him. She said he had lovely eyes like my father's (Mum always said Dad had lovely eyes when he was young).

So I always thought that Edward was Arthur Nutt's son and that was my belief when we started talking about the unexpected DNA results.

About the authors

Judi and Alan are both family historians although prior to this project we had never met. Our research interests include the Claypole family. Sarah Elizabeth Claypole (Judi's great grandmother) was first cousin (once removed) of Sarah Ann Claypole (Alan's great grandmother). Most of the details of this story, which ranges across rural Northamptonshire, Greater Manchester and Nottingham before terminating in Essex have been unearthed at a distance via the internet as we live respectively in the North West and the North East of England.

Publication

This article first appeared in the Newslatter of The War Graves Photographic Project(9)

The full story of the short complicated life and untimely death of Edward Nutt, which was only revealed by the surprising and totally unexpected results of a recent DNA test, is in the article Claypole-Nutt: A saga of Finedon

A Vote of Thanks

The authors would like to express their thanks to Malcolm R Duncan, Steve Rogers and Julie Wilson for permission to use their photographs of the Nutt grave in the London Road Cemetery, Leigh on Sea.

References

Links to:
1. The Commonwealth War Graves Commission (CWGC) website
2. The War Graves Photographic Project (TWGPP) website
3. BillionGraves: Cemetery & Headstone Records website

Return to Top of Page