By Matthew Hathaway of Bicester Local History Society

THE Declaration of War on August 3, 1914, was greeted with patriotic fervour.

Many of those enlisting joined their local regiments, “The Queen's Own Oxfordshire Hussars” and the “Oxfordshire and Buckinghamshire Light Infantry”.

Lord Kitchener’s national recruitment appeals saw many men volunteering to serve in the armed forces early in the war, but others were conscripted after January 1916. Most joined the Army, although a significant number enlisted in the Royal Navy.

In 1914, with only a month of training, The Queen’s Own Oxfordshire Hussars received an unexpected telegram posting them to Flanders to help prevent a German advance to the Channel ports.

The Hussars became the first British territorial unit to see action in World War I, subsequently taking part in actions ranging from Ypres in 1914 to Amiens and the final Allied advance in 1918.

The war impacted on Bicester in a number of ways. At the beginning of the war, Bicester Hall (now Hometree House) was requisitioned and converted into a hospital with fifty-six beds for the treatment of the wounded.

The hospital was administered by the Bicester Branch of the Red Cross and was filled to capacity throughout the war. Many of the staff at the hospital, including Miss Dorothy Mountain, were local volunteers, and Mr J. T. Mountain (the Chemist from Sheep Street), Dr Hendricks, Dr Long and Dr Montgomery were all closely associated with the hospital.

The residents of Bicester were enthusiastic in their support of the hospital.

Charity stalls helped raise funds, selling anything from garden produce to second-hand goods. There were also a number of Red Cross Society concerts held in St Edburg’s Hall, often involving performances by the patients themselves.

Aerodromes were constructed at Bicester, Weston-on-the-Green and Upper Heyford to provide bases for the Royal Flying Corps, though none of the airfields became operational until late in the war.

The Bicester aerodrome was constructed at Caversfield, on the outskirts of the town, and consisted of a flying field and domestic site straddling the Bicester to Buckingham road. 118 Squadron was based at Bicester and equipped with Bristol Fighter and Avro 504K aircraft.

When the war ended with the Armistice on November 11, 1918, local communities were left to count the cost. Over four hundred and fifty service personnel from the Ploughley District were among the fallen, with well over one hundred of them from Bicester alone.

Over the next few years war memorials were erected across the country. Bicester’s memorial, a cross in St Edburg’s churchyard and tablet in the church porch, were dedicated by the Lord Bishop of Oxford in a ceremony on February 10, 1921.

The ceremony was attended by 1,000 people who filled the church to capacity and crowded around the cross in the churchyard. The unveiling was performed by Captain H. G. Fane, of Bicester House, who had lost three sons during the war and himself served as second in command of D Company, Oxfordshire Volunteer Regiment.

Delivering his address from the pulpit, the Bishop said that in every parish in England there was a memorial – a tribute of loving, grateful memory to the sacrifice of loyalty of their brothers.

“To people of a hundred years hence, it shall come home to them, they will see there was no parish and scarcely a home that was not touched. They will pause and they will think of the sorrow, and bereavement, and anguish of the cutting off of those to whom England was looking to carry on her great traditions.”

We do think about and honour their sacrifice, and are now about to commemorate the centenary of the end of the Great War. Bicester Local History Society are working with Bicester Town Council to erect a memorial bench in Garth Park to mark the event.

We are also working with St Edburg’s Church to commemorate the town's fallen on November 10, ahead of the next day's memorial service, but we need your help to do so.

If you have any information, particularly photographs, for any of the men who served or died in the Great War then please get in touch, either via the newspaper, in person at one of our monthly meetings, or email rollofhonour@blhs.org.uk