In memory of James Charles Mallows

ystradgynlais_james_and_daisy_mallowsJames was born in Hay-on-Wye on 11 February 1881. He was the youngest of the three children of George and Eliza Mallows. George had worked as a farm labourer and coffin maker in a Norfolk village before moving to Hay. Eliza and the couple’s older children moved to Hay later.

The family subsequently relocated to Abercrave, where George built a pair of houses. He sold the larger of the two and kept the other, named Rose Villa, for his family. James was still living there when George died, and James inherited the property. It’s thought that James worked in a local colliery.

James married a cousin, Daisy Florence Badham, on 7 February 1903. Daisy had grown up in Poplar, east London. The couple (pictured left) had six children: George, Lily, Sidney, William, Ivy and Violet. The family continued to live at Rose Villa after the First World War.

James enlisted in 1916 and served as a stretcher bearer in the Welsh Regiment. When he came home on leave from the Western Front in October 1917, a reception concert at Abercrave Church Hall was provided in honour of James and fellow soldier James Ford, of the Royal Field Artillery.

In the closing stages of the war, he took part in the Allies’ “advance to victory” from the Somme region to Loos. He died near Arras on 1 September 1918, aged 37. He has no known grave and is commemorated on the Commonwealth war memorial at Vis-en-Artois.

James’ nephew Albert Richard Mallows also died in the war, having served as a sapper with the Royal Engineers. He had worked in local collieries and was deployed by the Royal Engineers as a miner in its tunnelling corps. He was wounded on 1 August 1917 and “passed down the lines” to a clearing hospital, where he died later that day, aged 21.

With thanks to Kate Woolley, James’ granddaughter

Return to Ystradgynlais war memorial page

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